The conversion of the new and
savage races which enter the theatre of history at the threshold of the middle
ages, was the great work of the Christian church from the sixth to the tenth
century. Already in the second or third century, Christianity was carried to
the Gauls, the Britons and the Germans on the borders of the Rhine. But these
were sporadic efforts with transient results. The work did not begin in earnest
till the sixth century, and then it went vigorously forward to the tenth and
twelfth, though with many checks and temporary relapses caused by civil wars
and foreign invasions.

The Christianization of the
Kelts, Teutons, and Slavonians was at the same time a process of civilization,
and differed in this respect entirely from the conversion of the Jews, Greeks,
and Romans in the preceding age. Christian missionaries laid the foundation for
the alphabet, literature, agriculture, laws, and arts of the nations of
Northern and Western Europe, as they now do among the heathen nations in Asia
and Africa. "The science of language," says a competent judge,6 "owes more than its first impulse to Christianity. The
pioneers of our science were those very apostles who were commanded to go into
all the world and preach the gospel to every creature; and their true
successors, the missionaries of the whole Christian church." The same may be said of every branch of
knowledge and art of peace. The missionaries, in aiming at piety and the
salvation of souls, incidentally promoted mental culture and temporal
prosperity. The feeling of brotherhood inspired by Christianity broke down the
partition walls between race and race, and created a brotherhood of nations.

The mediaeval Christianization
was a wholesale conversion, or a conversion of nations under the command of
their leaders. It was carried on not only by missionaries and by spiritual
means, but also by political influence, alliances of heathen princes with
Christian wives, and in some cases (as the baptism of the Saxons under
Charlemagne) by military force. It was a conversion not to the primary
Christianity of inspired apostles, as laid down in the New Testament, but to
the secondary Christianity of ecclesiastical tradition, as taught by the
fathers, monks and popes. It was a baptism by water, rather than by fire and
the Holy Spirit. The preceding instruction amounted to little or nothing; even
the baptismal formula, mechanically recited in Latin, was scarcely understood.
The rude barbarians, owing to the weakness of their heathen religion, readily
submitted to the new religion; but some tribes yielded only to the sword of the
conqueror.

This superficial, wholesale
conversion to a nominal Christianity must be regarded in the light of a
national infant-baptism. It furnished the basis for a long process of Christian
education. The barbarians were children in knowledge, and had to be treated
like children. Christianity, assumed the form of a new law leading them, as a
schoolmaster, to the manhood of Christ.

The missionaries of the middle
ages were nearly all monks. They were generally men of limited education and
narrow views, but devoted zeal and heroic self-denial. Accustomed to primitive
simplicity of life, detached from all earthly ties, trained to all sorts of
privations, ready for any amount of labor, and commanding attention and
veneration by their unusual habits, their celibacy, fastings and constant
devotions, they were upon the whole the best pioneers of Christianity and
civilization among the savage races of Northern and Western Europe. The lives
of these missionaries are surrounded by their biographers with such a halo of
legends and miracles, that it is almost impossible to sift fact from fiction.
Many of these miracles no doubt were products of fancy or fraud; but it would
be rash to deny them all.

The same reason which made
miracles necessary in the first introduction of Christianity, may have demanded
them among barbarians before they were capable of appreciating the higher moral
evidences.

I. THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND,
IRELAND, AND SCOTLAND.

§ 7. Literature.

I.
Sources.

Gildas (Abbot
of Bangor in Wales, the oldest British historian, in the sixth cent.): De excidio Britanniae conquestus, etc. A picture of the evils of
Britain at the time. Best ed. by Joseph Stevenson, Lond., 1838. (English
Historical Society's publications.)

The Works of Gildas and Nennius transl. from the Latin by J. A. Giles, London, 1841.

*Beda Venerabilis (d. 734): Historia Ecclesiastica gentis
Anglorum; in
the sixth vol. of Migne's ed. of Bedae Opera Omnia, also often separately published and translated into
English. Best ed. by Stevenson, Lond., 1838; and by Giles, Lond.,
1849. It is the only reliable church-history of the Anglo-Saxon period.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, from the time of
Caesar to 1154. A work of several successive hands, ed. by Gibson with
an Engl. translation, 1823, and by Giles, 1849 (in one vol. with Bede's Eccles.
History).

See the Six Old
English Chronicles, in Bohn's Antiquarian Library (1848); and Church
Historians of England trans. by Jos.
Stevenson, Lond. 1852-'56, 6
vols.

*Arthur West Haddan and William Stubbs: Councils and
Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland: edited after
Spelman and Wilkins. Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1869 to '78. So far 3 vols.
To be continued down to the Reformation.

Dugald MacColl:
Early British Church. The Arthurian Legends. In "The Catholic
Presbyterian," London and New York, for 1880, No. 3, pp. 176 sqq.

(b) The
Christianization of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland.

Dr. Lanigan (R.C.): Ecclesiastical
History of Ireland. Dublin, 1829.

William G. Todd (Episc., Trinity Coll., Dublin): The
Church of St. Patrick: An Historical Inquiry into the Independence of the
Ancient Church of Ireland. London, 1844. By the same: A History of the
Ancient Church of Ireland. London, 1845. By the same: Book of Hymns of
the Ancient Church of Ireland. Dublin, 1855.

Ferdinand Walter: Das alte Wales. Bonn, 1859.

John Cunningham (Presbyterian): The Church History of Scotland from the Commencement
of the Christian Era to the Present Day. Edinburgh, 1859, 2 vols. (Vol. I.,
chs. 1-6).

C. Innes: Sketches of Early Scotch
History, and Social Progress. Edinb., 1861. (Refers to the history of local
churches, the university and home-life in the mediaeval period.)

Thomas McLauchan (Presbyt.): The Early Scottish Church: the Ecclesiastical History of
Scotland from the First to the Twelfth Century. Edinburgh, 1865.

Ebrard and McLauchan
are the ablest advocates of the anti-Romish and alleged semi-Protestant
character of the old Keltic church of Ireland and Scotland; but they present it
in a more favorable light than the facts warrant.

*Dr. W. D. Killen (Presbyt.): The Ecclesiastical History of Ireland
from the Earliest Period to the Present Times. London, 1875, 2 vols.

*Alex. Penrose
Forbes (Bishop of Brechin, d. 1875): Kalendars of Scottish Saints.
With Personal Notices of those of Alba, Laudonia and Stratchclyde.
Edinburgh (Edmonston & Douglas), 1872. By the same: Lives of S. Ninian
and S. Kentigern. Compiled in the twelfth century. Ed. from the best MSS.
Edinburgh, 1874.

*William Reeves (Canon of Armagh): Life
of St. Columba, Founder of Hy. Written by Adamnan, ninth Abbot of that
monastery. Edinburgh, 1874.

Britain made its first
appearance in secular history half a century before the Christian era, when
Julius Caesar, the conqueror of Gaul, sailed with a Roman army from Calais
across the channel, and added the British island to the dominion of the eternal
city, though it was not fully subdued till the reign of Claudius (a.d. 41-54). It figures in
ecclesiastical history from the conversion of the Britons in the second
century. Its missionary history is divided into two periods, the Keltic and the
Anglo-Saxon, both catholic in doctrine, as far as developed at that time,
slightly differing in discipline, yet bitterly hostile under the influence of
the antagonism of race, which was ultimately overcome in England and Scotland
but is still burning in Ireland, the proper home of the Kelts. The Norman
conquest made both races better Romanists than they were before.

The oldest inhabitants of
Britain, like the Irish, the Scots, and the Gauls, were of Keltic origin, half
naked and painted barbarians, quarrelsome, rapacious, revengeful, torn by
intestine factions, which facilitated their conquest. They had adopted, under
different appellations, the gods of the Greeks and Romans, and worshipped a
multitude of local deities, the genii of the woods, rivers, and mountains; they
paid special homage to the oak, the king of the forest. They offered the fruits
of the earth, the spoils of the enemy, and, in the hour of danger, human lives.
Their priests, called druids,7dwelt in huts or caverns, amid the silence and
gloom of the forest, were in possession of all education and spiritual power,
professed to know the secrets of nature, medicine and astrology, and practised
the arts of divination. They taught, as the three principles of wisdom:
"obedience to the laws of God, concern for the good of man, and fortitude
under the accidents of life." They
also taught the immortality of the soul and the fiction of metempsychosis. One
class of the druids, who delivered their instructions in verse, were
distinguished by the title of bards, who as poets and musicians accompanied the
chieftain to the battle-field, and enlivened the feasts of peace by the sound
of the harp. There are still remains of druidical temples—the most remarkable
at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, and at Stennis in the Orkney Islands—that is,
circles of huge stones standing in some cases twenty feet above the earth, and
near them large mounds supposed to be ancient burial-places; for men desire to
be buried near a place of worship.

The first introduction of
Christianity into Britain is involved in obscurity. The legendary history
ascribes it at least to ten different agencies, namely, 1) Bran, a British
prince, and his son Caradog, who is said to have become acquainted with St.
Paul in Rome, a.d. 51 to 58, and
to have introduced the gospel into his native country on his return. 2) St.
Paul. 3) St. Peter. 4) St. Simon Zelotes. 5) St. Philip. 6) St. James the
Great. 7) St. John. 8) Aristobulus (Rom. xvi. 10). 9) Joseph of Arimathaea, who
figures largely in the post-Norman legends of Glastonbury Abbey, and is said to
have brought the holy Graal—the vessel or platter of the Lord's
Supper—containing the blood of Christ, to England. 10) Missionaries of Pope
Eleutherus from Rome to King Lucius of Britain.8

But these legends cannot be
traced beyond the sixth century, and are therefore destitute of all historic
value. A visit of St. Paul to Britain between a.d.
63 and 67 is indeed in itself not impossible (on the assumption of a second
Roman captivity), and has been advocated even by such scholars as Ussher and
Stillingfleet, but is intrinsically improbable, and destitute of all evidence.9

The conversion of King Lucius in
the second century through correspondence with the Roman bishop Eleutherus (176
to 190), is related by Bede, in connection with several errors, and is a legend
rather than an established fact.10 Irenaeus
of Lyons, who enumerates all the churches one by one, knows of none in Britain.
Yet the connection of Britain with Rome and with Gaul must have brought it
early into contact with Christianity. About a.d.
208 Tertullian exultingly declared "that places in Britain not yet visited
by Romans were subject to Christ."11 St.
Alban, probably a Roman soldier, died as the British proto-martyr in the
Diocletian persecution (303), and left the impress of his name on English
history.12 Constantine, the first Christian emperor, was born in Britain, and
his mother, St. Helena, was probably a native of the country. In the Council of
Arles, a.d. 314, which condemned
the Donatists, we meet with three British bishops, Eborius of York (Eboracum),
Restitutus of London (Londinum), and Adelfius of Lincoln (Colonia
Londinensium), or Caerleon in Wales, besides a presbyter and deacon.13 In the Arian controversy the British churches sided with
Athanasius and the Nicene Creed, though hesitating about the term homoousios.14 A notorious heretic, Pelagius (Morgan), was from the same island;
his abler, though less influential associate, Celestius, was probably an
Irishman; but their doctrines were condemned (429), and the Catholic faith reëstablished
with the assistance of two Gallic bishops.15

Monumental remains of the
British church during the Roman period are recorded or still exist at
Canterbury (St. Martin's), Caerleon, Bangor, Glastonbury, Dover, Richborough
(Kent), Reculver, Lyminge, Brixworth, and other places.16

The Roman dominion in Britain
ceased about a.d. 410; the troops
were withdrawn, and the country left to govern itself. The result was a partial
relapse into barbarism and a demoralization of the church. The intercourse with
the Continent was cut off, and the barbarians of the North pressed heavily upon
the Britons. For a century and a half we hear nothing of the British churches
till the silence is broken by the querulous voice of Gildas, who informs us of
the degeneracy of the clergy, the decay of religion, the introduction and
suppression of the Pelagian heresy, and the mission of Palladius to the Scots
in Ireland. This long isolation accounts in part for the trifling differences
and the bitter antagonism between the remnant of the old British church and the
new church imported from Rome among the hated Anglo-Saxons.

The difference was not
doctrinal, but ritualistic and disciplinary. The British as well as the Irish
and Scotch Christians of the sixth and seventh centuries kept Easter on the
very day of the full moon in March when it was Sunday, or on the next Sunday
following. They adhered to the older cycle of eighty-four years in opposition
to the later Dionysian cycle of ninety-five years, which came into use on the
Continent since the middle of the sixth century.17 They shaved the fore-part of their head from ear to ear in the
form of a crescent, allowing the hair to grow behind, in imitation of the
aureola, instead of shaving, like the Romans, the crown of the head in a
circular form, and leaving a circle of hair, which was to represent the
Saviour's crown of thorns. They had, moreover—and this was the most important
and most irritating difference—become practically independent of Rome, and transacted
their business in councils without referring to the pope, who began to be
regarded on the Continent as the righteous ruler and judge of all Christendom.

From these facts some historians
have inferred the Eastern or Greek origin of the old British church. But there
is no evidence whatever of any such connection, unless it be perhaps through
the medium of the neighboring church of Gaul, which was partly planted or
moulded by Irenaeus of Lyons, a pupil of St. Polycarp of Smyrna, and which
always maintained a sort of independence of Rome.

But in the points of dispute
just mentioned, the Gallican church at that time agreed with Rome.
Consequently, the peculiarities of the British Christians must be traced to
their insular isolation and long separation from Rome. The Western church on
the Continent passed through some changes in the development of the authority
of the papal see, and in the mode of calculating Easter, until the computation
was finally fixed through Dionysius Exiguus in 525. The British, unacquainted
with these changes, adhered to the older independence and to the older customs.
They continued to keep Easter from the 14th of the moon to the 20th. This
difference involved a difference in all the moveable festivals, and created
great confusion in England after the conversion of the Saxons to the Roman
rite.

§ 9. The Anglo-Saxons.

Literature.

I. The sources for
the planting of Roman Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons are several Letters
of Pope Gregory I. (Epp.,
Lib. VI. 7, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59; IX. 11, 108; XI. 28, 29, 64, 65,
66, 76; in Migne's ed. of Gregory's Opera, Vol. III.; also in Haddan and
Stubbs, III. 5 sqq.); the first and second books of Bede's Eccles. Hist.; Goscelin's Life of St. Augustin, written in the 11th
century, and contained in the Acta Sanctorum of May 26th; and Thorne's
Chronicles of St. Augustine's Abbey. See also Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, etc., the 3d vol., which comes down
to a.d. 840.

British Christianity was always
a feeble plant, and suffered greatly, from the Anglo-Saxon conquest and the
devastating wars which followed it. With the decline of the Roman power, the
Britons, weakened by the vices of Roman civilization, and unable to resist the
aggressions of the wild Picts and Scots from the North, called Hengist and
Horsa, two brother-princes and reputed descendants of Wodan, the god of war,
from Germany to their aid, a.d.
449.18

From this time begins the
emigration of Saxons, Angles or Anglians, Jutes, and Frisians to Britain. They
gave to it a new nationality and a new language, the Anglo-Saxon, which forms
the base and trunk of the present people and language of England (Angle-land). They
belonged to the great Teutonic race, and came from the Western and Northern
parts of Germany, from the districts North of the Elbe, the Weser, and the
Eyder, especially from Holstein, Schleswig, and Jutland. They could never be
subdued by the Romans, and the emperor Julian pronounced them the most
formidable of all the nations that dwelt beyond the Rhine on the shores of the
Western ocean. They were tall and handsome, with blue eyes and fair skin,
strong and enduring, given to pillage by land, and piracy by sea, leaving the
cultivation of the soil, with the care of their flocks, to women and slaves.
They were the fiercest among the Germans. They sacrificed a tenth of their
chief captives on the altars of their gods. They used the spear, the sword, and
the battle-axe with terrible effect. "We have not," says Sidonius,
bishop of Clermont,19"a more cruel and more dangerous enemy than
the Saxons. They overcome all who have the courage to oppose them .... When
they pursue, they infallibly overtake; when they are pursued, their escape is
certain. They despise danger; they are inured to shipwreck; they are eager to
purchase booty with the peril of their lives. Tempests, which to others are so
dreadful, to them are subjects of joy. The storm is their protection when they
are pressed by the enemy, and a cover for their operations when they meditate
an attack." Like the Bedouins in
the East, and the Indians of America, they were divided in tribes, each with a
chieftain. In times of danger, they selected a supreme commander under the name
of Konyng or King, but only for a period.

These strangers from the
Continent successfully repelled the Northern invaders; but being well pleased
with the fertility and climate of the country, and reinforced by frequent
accessions from their countrymen, they turned upon the confederate Britons,
drove them to the mountains of Wales and the borders of Scotland, or reduced
them to slavery, and within a century and a half they made themselves masters
of England. From invaders they became settlers, and established an octarchy or
eight independent kingdoms, Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex, Northumbria, Mercia,
Bernicia, and Deira. The last two were often united under the same head; hence
we generally speak of but seven kingdoms or the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy.

From this period of the conflict
between the two races dates the Keltic form of the Arthurian legends, which afterwards
underwent a radical telescopic transformation in France. They have no
historical value except in connection with the romantic poetry of mediaeval
religion.20

§ 10. The Mission of Gregory and Augustin. Conversion of Kent, a.d. 595-604.

With the conquest of the
Anglo-Saxons, who were heathen barbarians, Christianity was nearly extirpated
in Britain. Priests were cruelly massacred, churches and monasteries were
destroyed, together with the vestiges of a weak Roman civilization. The hatred
and weakness of the Britons prevented them from offering the gospel to the
conquerors, who in turn would have rejected it from contempt of the conquered.21

But fortunately Christianity was
re-introduced from a remote country, and by persons who had nothing to do with
the quarrels of the two races. To Rome, aided by the influence of France,
belongs the credit of reclaiming England to Christianity and civilization. In
England the first, and, we may say, the only purely national church in the West
was founded, but in close union with the papacy. "The English
church," says Freeman, "reverencing Rome, but not slavishly bowing
down to her, grew up with a distinctly national character, and gradually
infused its influence into all the feelings and habits of the English people.
By the end of the seventh century, the independent, insular, Teutonic church
had become one of the brightest lights of the Christian firmament. In short,
the introduction of Christianity completely changed the position of the English
nation, both within its own island and towards the rest of the world."22

The origin of the Anglo-Saxon
mission reads like a beautiful romance. Pope Gregory I., when abbot of a
Benedictine convent, saw in the slave-market of Rome three Anglo-Saxon boys
offered for sale. He was impressed with their fine appearance, fair complexion,
sweet faces and light flaxen hair; and learning, to his grief, that they were
idolaters, he asked the name of their nation, their country, and their king.
When he heard that they were Angles, he said: "Right, for they have angelic
faces, and are worthy to be fellow-heirs with angels in heaven." They were from the province Deira.
"Truly," he replied, "are they De-ira-ns, that is,
plucked from the ire of God, and called to the mercy of
Christ." He asked the name of
their king, which was AElla or Ella (who reigned from 559 to 588). "Hallelujah,"
he exclaimed, "the praise of God the Creator must be sung in those
parts." He proceeded at once from
the slave market to the pope, and entreated him to send missionaries to
England, offering himself for this noble work. He actually started for the
spiritual conquest of the distant island. But the Romans would not part with
him, called him back, and shortly afterwards elected him pope (590). What he
could not do in person, he carried out through others.23

In the year 596, Gregory,
remembering his interview with the sweet-faced and fair-haired Anglo-Saxon
slave-boys, and hearing of a favorable opportunity for a mission, sent the
Benedictine abbot Augustin (Austin),
thirty other monks, and a priest, Laurentius, with instructions, letters of
recommendation to the Frank kings and several bishops of Gaul, and a few books,
to England.24 The
missionaries, accompanied by some interpreters from France, landed on the isle
of Thanet in Kent, near the mouth of the Thames.25 King Ethelbert, by his marriage to Bertha, a Christian princess
from Paris, who had brought a bishop with her, was already prepared for a
change of religion. He went to meet the strangers and received them in the open
air; being afraid of some magic if he were to see them under roof. They bore a
silver cross for their banner, and the image of Christ painted on a board; and
after singing the litany and offering prayers for themselves and the people
whom they had come to convert, they preached the gospel through their Frank
interpreters. The king was pleased with the ritualistic and oratorical display
of the new religion from distant, mighty Rome, and said: "Your words and
promises are very fair; but as they are new to us and of uncertain import, I
cannot forsake the religion I have so long followed with the whole English
nation. Yet as you are come from far, and are desirous to benefit us, I will
supply you with the necessary sustenance, and not forbid you to preach and to
convert as many as you can to your religion."26 Accordingly, he allowed them to reside in the City of Canterbury
(Dorovern, Durovernum), which was the metropolis of his kingdom, and was soon
to become the metropolis of the Church of England. They preached and led a
severe monastic life. Several believed and were baptized, "admiring,"
as Bede says, "the simplicity of their innocent life, and the sweetness of
their heavenly doctrine." He also
mentions miracles. Gregory warned Augustin not to be puffed up by miracles, but
to rejoice with fear, and to tremble in rejoicing, remembering what the Lord
said to his disciples when they boasted that even the devils were subject to
them. For not all the elect work miracles, and yet the names of all are written
in heaven.27

King Ethelbert was converted and
baptized (probably June 2, 597), and drew gradually his whole nation after him,
though he was taught by the missionaries not to use compulsion, since the
service of Christ ought to be voluntary.

Augustin, by order of pope Gregory,
was ordained archbishop of the English nation by Vergilius,28archbishop of Arles, Nov. 16,
597, and became the first primate of England, with a long line of successors
even to this day. On his return, at Christmas, he baptized more than ten
thousand English. His talents and character did not rise above mediocrity, and
he bears no comparison whatever with his great namesake, the theologian and
bishop of Hippo; but he was, upon the whole, well fitted for his missionary
work, and his permanent success lends to his name the halo of a borrowed
greatness. He built a church and monastery at Canterbury, the mother-church of
Anglo-Saxon Christendom. He sent the priest Laurentius to Rome to inform the
pope of his progress and to ask an answer to a number of questions concerning
the conduct of bishops towards their clergy, the ritualistic differences
between the Roman and the Gallican churches, the marriage of two brothers to
two sisters, the marriage of relations, whether a bishop may be ordained
without other bishops being present, whether a woman with child ought to be
baptized, how long after the birth of an infant carnal intercourse of married people
should be delayed, etc. Gregory answered these questions very fully in the
legalistic and ascetic spirit of the age, yet, upon the whole, with much good
sense and pastoral wisdom.29

It is remarkable that this pope,
unlike his successors, did not insist on absolute conformity to the Roman
church, but advises Augustin, who thought that the different customs of the
Gallican church were inconsistent with the unity of faith, "to choose from
every church those things that are pious, religious and upright;" for
"things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the
sake of good things."30 In other
respects, the advice falls in with the papal system and practice. He directs
the missionaries not to destroy the heathen temples, but to convert them into
Christian churches, to substitute the worship of relics for the worship of
idols, and to allow the new converts, on the day of dedication and other
festivities, to kill cattle according to their ancient custom, yet no more to
the devils, but to the praise of God; for it is impossible, he thought, to
efface everything at once from their obdurate minds; and he who endeavors to
ascend to the highest place, must rise by degrees or steps, and not by leaps.31 This method was faithfully followed by his missionaries. It no
doubt facilitated the nominal conversion of England, but swept a vast amount of
heathenism into the Christian church, which it took centuries to eradicate.

Gregory sent to Augustin, June
22, 601, the metropolitan pall (pallium), several priests (Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, and
others), many books, sacred vessels and vestments, and relics of apostles and
martyrs. He directed him to ordain twelve bishops in the archiepiscopal diocese
of Canterbury, and to appoint an archbishop for York, who was also to ordain
twelve bishops, if the country adjoining should receive the word of God.
Mellitus was consecrated the first bishop of London; Justus, bishop of
Rochester, both in 604 by Augustin (without assistants); Paulinus, the first
archbishop of York, 625, after the death of Gregory and Augustin.32 The pope sent also letters and presents to king Ethelbert,
"his most excellent son," exhorting him to persevere in the faith, to
commend it by good works among his subjects, to suppress the worship of idols,
and to follow the instructions of Augustin.

§ 11. Antagonism of the Saxon and British Clergy.

Bede, II. 2; Haddan and Stubbs, III. 38-41.

Augustin, with the aid of king
Ethelbert, arranged (in 602 or 603) a conference with the British bishops, at a
place in Sussex near the banks of the Severn under an oak, called
"Augustin's Oak."33 He admonished them to conform to the Roman ceremonial in the
observance of Easter Sunday, and the mode of administering baptism, and to
unite with their Saxon brethren in converting the Gentiles. Augustin had
neither wisdom nor charity enough to sacrifice even the most trifling
ceremonies on the altar of peace. He was a pedantic and contracted churchman.
He met the Britons, who represented at all events an older and native
Christianity, with the haughty spirit of Rome, which is willing to compromise
with heathen customs, but demands absolute submission from all other forms of
Christianity, and hates independence as the worst of heresies.

The Britons preferred their own
traditions. After much useless contention, Augustin proposed, and the Britons
reluctantly accepted, an appeal to the miraculous interposition of God. A blind
man of the Saxon race was brought forward and restored to sight by his prayer.
The Britons still refused to give up their ancient customs without the consent
of their people, and demanded a second and larger synod.

At the second Conference, seven
bishops of the Britons, with a number of learned men from the Convent of
Bangor, appeared, and were advised by a venerated hermit to submit the Saxon
archbishop to the moral test of meekness and humility as required by Christ
from his followers. If Augustin, at the meeting, shall rise before them, they
should hear him submissively; but if he shall not rise, they should despise him
as a proud man. As they drew near, the Roman dignitary remained seated in his
chair. He demanded of them three things, viz. compliance with the Roman
observance of the time of Easter, the Roman form of baptism, and aid in efforts
to convert the English nation; and then he would readily tolerate their other
peculiarities. They refused, reasoning among themselves, if he will not rise up
before us now, how much more will he despise us when we shall be subject to his
authority? Augustin indignantly rebuked
them and threatened the divine vengeance by the arms of the Saxons. "All
which," adds Bede, "through the dispensation of the divine judgment,
fell out exactly as he had predicted."
For, a few years afterwards (613), Ethelfrith the Wild, the pagan King
of Northumbria, attacked the Britons at Chester, and destroyed not only their
army, but slaughtered several hundred34priests and monks, who
accompanied the soldiers to aid them with their prayers. The massacre was
followed by the destruction of the flourishing monastery of Bangor, where more
than two thousand monks lived by the labor of their hands.

This is a sad picture of the
fierce animosity of the two races and rival forms of Christianity. Unhappily,
it continues to the present day, but with a remarkable difference: the Keltic
Irish who, like the Britons, once represented a more independent type of
Catholicism, have, since the Norman conquest, and still more since the
Reformation, become intense Romanists; while the English, once the dutiful
subjects of Rome, have broken with that foreign power altogether, and have
vainly endeavored to force Protestantism upon the conquered race. The Irish
problem will not be solved until the double curse of national and religious
antagonism is removed.

§ 12. Conversion of the Other Kingdoms of the Heptarchy.

Augustin, the apostle of the
Anglo-Saxons, died a.d. 604, and
lies buried, with many of his successors, in the venerable cathedral of
Canterbury. On his tomb was written this epitaph: "Here rests the Lord
Augustin, first archbishop of Canterbury, who being formerly sent hither by the
blessed Gregory, bishop of the city of Rome, and by God's assistance supported with
miracles, reduced king Ethelbert and his nation from the worship of idols to
the faith of Christ, and having ended the days of his office in peace, died on
the 26th day of May, in the reign of the same king."35

He was not a great man; but he
did a great work in laying the foundations of English Christianity and
civilization.

Laurentius (604-619), and
afterwards Mellitus (619-624) succeeded him in his office.

Other priests and monks were
sent from Italy, and brought with them books and such culture as remained after
the irruption of the barbarians. The first archbishops of Canterbury and York,
and the bishops of most of the Southern sees were foreigners, if not
consecrated, at least commissioned by the pope, and kept up a constant
correspondence with Rome. Gradually a native clergy arose in England.

The work of Christianization
went on among the other kingdom of the heptarchy, and was aided by the marriage
of kings with Christian wives, but was more than once interrupted by relapse
into heathenism. Northumbria was converted chiefly through the labors of the
sainted Aidan (d. Aug. 31, 651),
a monk from the island Iona or Hii, and the first bishop of Lindisfarne, who is
even lauded by Bede for his zeal, piety and good works, although he differed
from him on the Easter question.36 Sussex was the last part of the Heptarchy which renounced
paganism. It took nearly a hundred years before England was nominally converted
to the Christian religion.37

To this conversion England owes
her national unity and the best elements of her civilization.38

The Anglo-Saxon Christianity was
and continued to be till the Reformation, the Christianity of Rome, with its
excellences and faults. It included the Latin mass, the worship of saints,
images and relics, monastic virtues and vices, pilgrimages to the holy city,
and much credulity and superstition. Even kings abdicated their crown to show
their profound reverence for the supreme pontiff and to secure from him a
passport to heaven. Chapels, churches and cathedrals were erected in the towns;
convents founded in the country by the bank of the river or under the shelter
of a hill, and became rich by pious donations of land. The lofty cathedrals and
ivy-clad ruins of old abbeys and cloisters in England and Scotland still remain
to testify in solemn silence to the power of mediaeval Catholicism.

§ 13. Conformity to Row Established. Wilfrid, Theodore, Bede.

The dispute between the
Anglo-Saxon or Roman, and the British ritual was renewed in the middle of the
seventh century, but ended with the triumph of the former in England proper.
The spirit of independence had to take refuge in Ireland and Scotland till the
time of the Norman conquest, which crushed it out also in Ireland.

Wilfrid, afterwards bishop of York, the
first distinguished native prelate who combined clerical habits with haughty
magnificence, acquired celebrity by expelling "the quartodeciman heresy
and schism," as it was improperly called, from Northumbria, where the
Scots had introduced it through St. Aidan. The controversy was decided in a
Synod held at Whitby in 664 in the presence of King Oswy or Oswio and his son
Alfrid. Colman, the second success or of Aidan, defended the Scottish
observance of Easter by the authority of St. Columba and the apostle John.
Wilfrid rested the Roman observance on the authority of Peter, who had
introduced it in Rome, and on the universal custom of Christendom. When he
mentioned, that to Peter were intrusted the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the
king said: "I will not contradict the door-keeper, lest when I come to the
gates of the kingdom of heaven, there should be none to open them." By this irresistible argument the opposition
was broken, and conformity to the Roman observance established. The Scottish
semi-circular tonsure also, which was ascribed to Simon Magus, gave way to the
circular, which was derived from St. Peter. Colman, being worsted, returned
with his sympathizers to Scotland, where he built two monasteries. Tuda was
made bishop in his place.39

Soon afterwards, a dreadful
pestilence raged through England and Ireland, while Caledonia was saved, as the
pious inhabitants believed, by the intercession of St. Columba.

The fusion of English Christians
was completed in the age of Theodorus, archbishop of Canterbury (669 to 690),
and Beda Venerabilis ( b. 673, d. 735), presbyter and monk of Wearmouth. About
the same time Anglo-Saxon literature was born, and laid the foundation for the
development of the national genius which ultimately broke loose from Rome.

Theodore
was a native of
Tarsus, where Paul was born, educated in Athens, and, of course, acquainted
with Greek and Latin learning. He received his appointment and consecration to
the primacy of England from Pope Vitalian. He arrived at Canterbury May 27,
669, visited the whole of England, established the Roman rule of Easter, and
settled bishops in all the sees except London. He unjustly deposed bishop
Wilfrid of York, who was equally devoted to Rome, but in his later years became
involved in sacerdotal jealousies and strifes. He introduced order into the
distracted church and some degree of education among the clergy. He was a man
of autocratic temper, great executive ability, and, having been directly sent
from Rome, he carried with him double authority. "He was the first
archbishop," says Bede, "to whom the whole church of England
submitted." During his
administration the first Anglo-Saxon mission to the mother-country of the
Saxons and Friesians was attempted by Egbert, Victberet, and Willibrord (689 to
692). His chief work is a "Penitential" with minute directions for a
moral and religious life, and punishments for drunkenness, licentiousness, and
other prevalent vices.40

The Venerable Bede was the first native English scholar, the
father of English theology and church history. He spent his humble and peaceful
life in the acquisition and cultivation of ecclesiastical and secular learning,
wrote Latin in prose and verse, and translated portions of the Bible into
Anglo-Saxon. His chief work is his—the only reliable—Church History of old
England. He guides us with a gentle hand and in truly Christian spirit, though
colored by Roman views, from court to court, from monastery to monastery, and
bishopric to bishopric, through the missionary labyrinth of the miniature
kingdoms of his native island. He takes the Roman side in the controversies with
the British churches.41

Before Bede cultivated Saxon
prose, Caedmon (about 680), first a swine-herd, then a monk at Whitby, sung, as
by inspiration, the wonders of creation and redemption, and became the father
of Saxon (and Christian German) poetry. His poetry brought the Bible history
home to the imagination of the Saxon people, and was a faint prophecy of the
"Divina Comedia" and the "Paradise Lost."42 We have a remarkable parallel to this association of Bede and
Caedmon in the association of Wiclif, the first translator of the whole Bible
into English (1380), and the contemporary of Chaucer, the father of English
poetry, both forerunners of the British Reformation, and sustaining a relation
to Protestant England somewhat similar to the relation which Bede and Caedmon
sustain to mediaeval Catholic England.

The conversion of England was
nominal and ritual, rather than intellectual and moral. Education was confined
to the clergy and monks, and consisted in the knowledge of the Decalogue, the
Creed and the Pater Noster, a little Latin without any Greek or Hebrew. The
Anglo-Saxon clergy were only less ignorant than the British. The ultimate
triumph of the Roman church was due chiefly to her superior organization, her
direct apostolic descent, and the prestige of the Roman empire. It made the
Christianity of England independent of politics and court-intrigues, and kept
it in close contact with the Christianity of the Continent. The advantages of
this connection were greater than the dangers and evils of insular isolation.
Among all the subjects of Teutonic tribes, the English became the most devoted
to the Pope. They sent more pilgrims to Rome and more money into the papal
treasury than any other nation. They invented the Peter's Pence. At least
thirty of their kings and queens, and an innumerable army of nobles ended their
days in cloistral retreats. Nearly all of the public lands were deeded to
churches and monasteries. But the exuberance of monasticism weakened the
military and physical forces of the nation

Danish and the Norman conquests.
The power and riches of the church secularized the clergy, and necessitated in
due time a reformation. Wealth always tends to vice, and vice to decay. The
Norman conquest did not change the ecclesiastical relations of England, but
infused new blood and vigor into the Saxon race, which is all the better for
its mixed character.

We add a list of the early
archbishops and bishops of the four principal English sees, in the order of
their foundation:43

Canterbury

London

Rochester.

York

Augustin

597

Mellitus

604

Justus

604

Paulinus

625

Laurentius

604

[Cedd in Essex

654]

Romanus

624

Chad

665

Mellitus

619

Wini

666

Paulinus

633

Wilfrid, consecrated 665, in possession

669

Justus

624

Erconwald

675

Ithamar

644

Honorius

627

Waldhere

693

Damian

655

669

Deusdedit

655

Ingwald

704

Putta

669

Bosa

678

Theodore

668

Cwichelm

676

Wilfrid again

686

Brihtwald

693

Gebmund

678

Bosa again

691

Tatwin

731

Tobias

693

John

706

§ 14. The Conversion of Ireland. St. Patrick and St. Bridget.

Literature.

I. The writings of St. Patrick
are printed in the Vitae Sanctorum of the Bollandists, sub March 17th; in Patricii
Opuscula, ed. Warsaeus (Sir James Ware,
Lond., 1656); in Migne's Patrolog.,
Tom. LIII. 790-839, and with critical notes in Haddan and Stubbs, Councils,
etc., Vol. II, Part II, (1878), pp. 296-323.

II. The Life of St.
Patrick in the Acta
Sanctorum,
Mart., Tom. II. 517 sqq.

Comp. also the works
of Todd, McLauchan, Ebrard,
Killen, and Skene, quoted in § 7, and Forbes, Kalendars of Scottish Saints,
p. 431.

The church-history of Ireland is
peculiar. It began with an independent catholicity (or a sort of
semi-Protestantism), and ended with Romanism, while other Western countries
passed through the reverse order. Lying outside of the bounds of the Roman
empire, and never invaded by Roman legions,44that virgin island was Christianized
without bloodshed and independently of Rome and of the canons of the
oecumenical synods. The early Irish church differed from the Continental
churches in minor points of polity and worship, and yet excelled them all
during the sixth and seventh centuries in spiritual purity and missionary zeal.
After the Norman conquest, it became closely allied to Rome. In the sixteenth
century the light of the Reformation did not penetrate into the native
population; but Queen Elizabeth and the Stuarts set up by force a Protestant
state-religion in antagonism to the prevailing faith of the people. Hence, by
the law of re-action, the Keltic portion of Ireland became more intensely Roman
Catholic being filled with double hatred of England on the ground of difference
of race and religion. This glaring anomaly of a Protestant state church in a
Roman Catholic country has been removed at last after three centuries of
oppression and misrule, by the Irish Church Disestablishment Act in 1869 under
the ministry of Gladstone.

The early history of Ireland
(Hibernia) is buried in obscurity. The ancient Hibernians were a mixed race,
but prevailingly Keltic. They were ruled by petty tyrants, proud, rapacious and
warlike, who kept the country in perpetual strife. They were devoted to their
religion of Druidism. Their island, even before the introduction of
Christianity, was called the Sacred Island. It was also called Scotia or
Scotland down to the eleventh century.45 The Romans made no attempt at subjugation, as they did not succeed
in establishing their authority in Caledonia.

The first traces of Irish
Christianity are found at the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth
century.

As Pelagius, the father of the
famous heresy, which bears his name, was a Briton, so Coelestius, his chief
ally and champion, was a Hibernian; but we do not know whether he was a
Christian before be left Ireland. Mansuetus, first bishop of Toul, was an Irish
Scot (a.d. 350). Pope Caelestine,
in 431, ordained and sent Palladius, a Roman deacon, and probably a native
Briton, "to the Scots believing in Christ," as their first bishop.46 This notice by Prosper of France implies the previous existence of
Christianity in Ireland. But Palladius was so discouraged that he soon
abandoned the field, with his assistants for North Britain, where he died among
the Picts.47 For
nearly two centuries after this date, we have no authentic record of papal
intercourse with Ireland; and yet during that period it took its place among
the Christian countries. It was converted by two humble individuals, who
probably never saw Rome, St. Patrick, once a slave, and St. Bridget, the
daughter of a slave-mother.48 The Roman tradition that St. Patrick was sent by Pope Caelestine
is too late to have any claim upon our acceptance, and is set aside by the
entire silence of St. Patrick himself in his genuine works. It arose from
confounding Patrick with Palladius. The Roman mission of Palladius failed; the
independent mission of Patrick succeeded. He is the true Apostle of Ireland,
and has impressed his memory in indelible characters upon the Irish race at
home and abroad.

St. Patrick or Patricius (died March 17, 465 or 493) was the son
of a deacon, and grandson of a priest, as he confesses himself without an
intimation of the unlawfulness of clerical marriages.49 He was in his youth carried captive into Ireland, with many
others, and served his master six years as a shepherd. While tending his flock
in the lonesome fields, the teachings of his childhood awakened to new life in
his heart without any particular external agency. He escaped to France or
Britain, was again enslaved for a short period, and had a remarkable dream,
which decided his calling. He saw a man, Victoricius, who handed him
innumerable letters from Ireland, begging him to come over and help them. He
obeyed the divine monition, and devoted the remainder of his life to the
conversion of Ireland (from a.d.
440 to 493).50

"I am," he says,
"greatly a debtor to God, who has bestowed his grace so largely upon me,
that multitudes were born again to God through me. The Irish, who never had the
knowledge of God and worshipped only idols and unclean things, have lately
become the people of the Lord, and are called sons of God." He speaks of having baptized many thousands
of men. Armagh seems to have been for some time the centre of his missionary
operations, and is to this day the seat of the primacy of Ireland, both Roman
Catholic and Protestant. He died in peace, and was buried in Downpatrick (or
Gabhul), where he began his mission, gained his first converts and spent his
declining years.51

His Roman Catholic biographers
have surrounded his life with marvelous achievements, while some modern
Protestant hypercritics have questioned even his existence, as there is no
certain mention of his name before 634; unless it be "the Hymn of St.
Sechnall (Secundinus) in praise of St. Patrick, which is assigned to
448. But if we accept his own writings, "there can be no reasonable
doubt" (we say with a Presbyterian historian of Ireland) "that he
preached the gospel in Hibernia in the fifth century; that he was a most
zealous and efficient evangelist, and that he is eminently entitled to the
honorable designation of the Apostle of Ireland."52

The Christianity of Patrick was
substantially that of Gaul and old Britain, i.e. Catholic, orthodox,
monastic, ascetic, but independent of the Pope, and differing from Rome in the
age of Gregory I. in minor matters of polity and ritual. In his Confession he
never mentions Rome or the Pope; he never appeals to tradition, and seems to
recognize the Scriptures (including the Apocrypha) as the only authority in
matters of faith. He quotes from the canonical Scriptures twenty-five times;
three times from the Apocrypha. It has been conjectured that the failure and
withdrawal of Palladius was due to Patrick, who had already monopolized this
mission-field; but, according to the more probable chronology, the mission of
Patrick began about nine years after that of Palladius. From the end of the
seventh century, the two persons were confounded, and a part of the history of
Palladius, especially his connection with Pope Caelestine, was transferred to
Patrick.53

With St. Patrick there is
inseparably connected the most renowned female saint of Ireland, St. Bridget
(or Brigid, Brigida, Bride), who prepared his winding sheet and survived
him many years. She died Feb. 1, 523 (or 525). She is "the Mary of
Ireland," and gave her name to innumerable Irish daughters, churches, and
convents. She is not to be confounded with her name-sake, the widow-saint of
Sweden. Her life is surrounded even by a still thicker cloud of legendary fiction
than that of St. Patrick, so that it is impossible to separate the facts from
the accretions of a credulous posterity. She was an illegitimate child of a
chieftain or bard, and a slave-mother, received holy orders, became deformed in
answer to her own prayer, founded the famous nunnery of Kildare (i.e. the
Church of the Oak),54foretold the birth of Columba, and performed all
sorts of signs and wonders.

Upon her tomb in Kildare arose
the inextinguishable flame called "the Light of St. Bridget," which
her nuns (like the Vestal Virgins of Rome) kept

"Through long ages of
darkness and storm" (Moore).

Six lives of her were published
by Colgan in his Trias Thaumaturgus, and five by the Bollandists in the Acta Sanctorum.

Critical Note on St. Patrick.

We have only one or two genuine
documents from Patrick, both written in semi-barbarous (early Irish) Latin, but
breathing an humble, devout and fervent missionary spirit without anything
specifically Roman, viz. his
autobiographical Confession (in 25 chapters), written shortly before his death
(493?), and his Letter of remonstrance to Coroticus (or Ceredig),
a British chieftain (nominally Christian), probably of Ceredigion or Cardigan,
who had made a raid into Ireland, and sold several of Patrick's converts into
slavery (10 chapters). The Confession, as contained in the "Book of
Armagh," is alleged to have been transcribed before a.d. 807 from Patrick's original
autograph, which was then partly illegible. There are four other MSS. of the
eleventh century, with sundry additions towards the close, which seem to be
independent copies of the same original. See Haddan & Stubbs, note on p.
296. The Epistle to Coroticus is much shorter, and not so generally accepted.
Both documents were first printed in 1656, then in 1668 in the Acta Sanctorum, also in Migne's Patrologia (Vol. 53), in Miss Cusack's Life
of St. Patrick, in the work of Ebrard (l.c. 482 sqq.), and in Haddan
& Stubbs, Councils (Vol. II., P. II., 296 sqq.).

There is a difference of opinion
about Patrick's nationality, whether he was of Scotch, or British, or French
extraction. He begins his Confession: "I, Patrick, a sinner, the rudest
and the least of all the faithful, and the most contemptible with the multitude
(Ego Patricius,
peccator, rusticissimus et minimus omnium fidelium et contemptibilissimus apud
plurimos, or,
according to another reading, contemptibilis sum apud plurimos), had for my father Calpornus
(or Calphurnius), a deacon (diaconum,
or diaconem), the son of Potitus (al.
Photius), a presbyter (filium quondam Potiti presbyteri), who lived in the village of Bannavem (or Banaven) of
Tabernia; for he had a cottage in the neighborhood where I was captured. I was
then about sixteen years old; but I was ignorant of the true God, and was led
away into captivity to Hibernia."
Bannavem of Tabernia is, perhaps Banavie in Lochaber in Scotland
(McLauchlan); others fix the place of his birth in Kilpatrick (i.e. the
cell or church of Patrick), near Dunbarton on the Clyde (Ussher, Butler,
Maclear); others, somewhere in Britain, and thus explain his epithet
"Brito" or "Briton" (Joceline and Skene); still others seek
it in Armoric Gaul, in Boulogne (from Bononia), and derive Brito from Brittany
(Lanigan, Moore, Killen, De Vinné).

He does not state the instrumentality
of his conversion. Being the son of a clergyman, he must have received some
Christian instruction; but he neglected it till he was made to feel the power
of religion in communion with God while in slavery. "After I arrived in
Ireland," he says (ch. 6), "every day I fed cattle, and frequently
during the day I prayed; more and more the love and fear of God burned, and my
faith and my spirit were strengthened, so that in one day I said as many as a
hundred prayers, and nearly as many in the night." He represents his call and commission as
coming directly from God through a vision, and alludes to no intervening
ecclesiastical authority or episcopal consecration. In one of the oldest Irish
MSS., the Book of Durrow, he is styled a presbyter. In the Epistle to
Coroticus, he appears more churchly and invested with episcopal power and
jurisdiction. It begins: "Patricius, peccator indoctus, Hiberione (or Hyberione)
constitutus episcopus, certissime reor, a Deo accepi id quod sum: inter
barbaras utique gentes proselytus et profuga, ob amorem Dei." (So according to the text of Haddan &
Stubbs, p. 314; somewhat different in Migne, Patrol. LIII. 814; and in
Ebrard, p. 505.) But the letter does
not state where or by whom he was consecrated.

The "Book of Armagh
"contains also an Irish hymn (the oldest monument of the Irish Keltic
language), called S. Patricii Canticum Scotticum, which Patrick is said to have
written when he was about to convert the chief monarch of the island (Laoghaire
or Loegaire).55 The hymn
is a prayer for the special aid of Almighty God for so important a work; it
contains the principal doctrines of orthodox Christianity, with a dread of
magical influences of aged women and blacksmiths, such as still prevails in
some parts of Ireland, but without an invocation of Mary and the saints, such as
we might expect from the Patrick of tradition and in a composition intended as
a breast-plate or corselet against spiritual foes. The following is the
principal portion:

"5. I bind to
myself to-day,—

The Power of God to
guide me,

The Might of God to
uphold me,

The Wisdom of God to
teach me,

The Eye of God to
watch over me,

The Ear of God to
hear me,

The Word of God to
give me speech.

The Hand of God to
protect me,

The Way of God to go
before me,

The Shield of God to
shelter me,

The Host of God to
defend me,
Against the snares of demons,
Against the temptations of vices,
Against the lusts of nature,
Against every man who meditates injury to me.
Whether far or near,
With few or with many.

6. I have set around
me all these powers,

Against every hostile
savage power,

Directed against my
body and my soul,

Against the
incantations of false prophets,

Against the black
laws of heathenism,

Against the false
laws of heresy,

Against the deceits
of idolatry,

Against the spells
of women, and smiths, and druids,

Against all
knowledge which blinds the soul of man.

7. Christ protect me
to-day

Against poison,
against burning,

Against drowning,
against wound,

That I may receive
abundant reward.

8. Christ with me, Christ
before me,

Christ behind me,
Christ within me,

Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,

Christ at my right,
Christ at my left,

Christ in the fort [i.e.
at home],

Christ in the
chariot-seat [travelling by land],

Christ in the poop
[travelling by water].

9. Christ in the
heart of every man who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth
of every man who speaks to me,

Christ in every eye
that sees me,

Christ in every ear
that hears me.

10. I bind to myself
to-day

The strong power of
an invocation of the Trinity,

The faith of the
Trinity in Unity,

The Creator of [the
elements].

11. Salvation is of
the Lord,

Salvation is of the
Lord,

Salvation is of
Christ;

May thy salvation, O
Lord, be ever with us."

The fourth and last document
which has been claimed as authentic and contemporary, is a Latin "Hymn in
praise of St. Patrick" (Hymnus Sancti Patricii, Episcopi Scotorum) by St. Sechnall (Secundinus)
which begins thus:

"Audite, omnes amantes Deum,
sancta merita

Viri in Christo
beati Patrici Episcopi:

Quomodo bonum ob
actum simulatur angelis,

Perfectamque
propter uitam aequatur Apostolis."

The poem is given in full by
Haddan & Stubbs, 324-327, and assigned to "before a.d. 448 (?)," in which year
Sechnall died. But how could he anticipate the work of Patrick, when his
mission, according to the same writers, began only eight years earlier (440),
and lasted till 493? The hymn is first
mentioned by Tyrechanus in the "Book of Armagh."

The next oldest document is the
Irish hymn of St. Fiacc on St. Patrick, which is assigned to the latter part of
the sixth century, (l.c. 356-361). The Senchus Mor is attributed to the age of St. Patrick; but it
is a code of Irish laws, derived from Pagan times, and gradually modified by
Christian ecclesiastics in favor of the church. The Canons attributed to
St. Patrick are of later date (Haddan & Stubbs, 328 sqq.).

It is strange that St. Patrick
is not mentioned by Bede in his Church History, although he often refers to
Hibernia and its church, and is barely named as a presbyter in his Martyrology.
He is also ignored by Columba and by the Roman Catholic writers, until his
mediaeval biographers from the eighth to the twelfth century Romanized him,
appealing not to his genuine Confession, but to spurious documents and vague
traditions. He is said to have converted all the Irish chieftains and bards,
even Ossian, the blind Homer of Scotland, who sang to him his long epic of
Keltic heroes and battles. He founded 365 or, according to others, 700
churches, and consecrated as many bishops, and 3,000 priests (when the whole
island had probably not more than two or three hundred thousand inhabitants;
for even in the reign of Elizabeth it did not exceed 600,000).56 He changed the laws of the kingdom, healed the blind, raised nine
persons from death to life, and expelled all the snakes and frogs from Ireland.57 His memory is celebrated March 17, and is a day of great public
processions with the Irish Catholics in all parts of the world. His death is
variously put in the year 455 (Tillemont), 464 or 465 (Butler, Killen), 493
(Ussher, Skene, Forbes, Haddan & Stubbs). Forbes (Kalendars, p. 433)
and Skene (Keltic Scotland, II. 427 sqq.) come to the conclusion that
the legend of St. Patrick in its present shape is not older than the ninth
century, and dissolves into three personages: Sen-Patrick,
whose day in the Kalendar is the 24th of August; Palladius, "qui est Patricius," to whom the mission in 431 properly belongs, and
Patricius, whose day is the 17th
of March, and who died in 493. "From the acts of these three saints, the
subsequent legend of the great Apostle of Ireland was compiled, and an
arbitrary chronology applied to it."

§ 15. The Irish Church after St. Patrick.

The Missionary
Period.

The labors of St. Patrick were
carried on by his pupils and by many British priests and monks who were driven
from England by the Anglo-Saxon invasion in the 5th and 6th centuries.58 There was an intimate intercourse between Ireland and Wales, where
British Christianity sought refuge, and between Ireland and Scotland, where the
seed of Christianity, had been planted by Ninian and Kentigern. In less than a
century, after St. Patrick's death Ireland was covered with churches and
convents for men and women. The monastic institutions were training schools of
clergymen and missionaries, and workshops for transscribing sacred books.
Prominent among these are the monasteries of Armagh, Banchor or Bangor (558),
Clonard (500), Clonmacnois (528), Derry (555), Glendolough (618).

During the sixth and seventh
centuries Ireland excelled all other countries in Christian piety, and acquired
the name of "the Island of Saints."
We must understand this in a comparative sense, and remember that at
that time England was just beginning to emerge from Anglo-Saxon heathenism,
Germany was nearly all heathen, and the French kings—the eldest sons of the
Church—were "monsters of iniquity."
Ireland itself was distracted by civil wars between the petty kings and
chieftains; and the monks and clergy, even the women, marched to the conflict.
Adamnan with difficulty secured a law exempting women from warfare, and it was
not till the ninth century that the clergy in Ireland were exempted from
"expeditions and hostings" (battles). The slave-trade was in full
vigor between Ireland and England in the tenth century, with the port of
Bristol for its centre. The Irish piety was largely based on childish
superstition. But the missionary zeal of that country is nevertheless most
praiseworthy. Ireland dreamed the dream of converting heathen Europe. Its
apostles went forth to Scotland, North Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland,
and North Italy. "They covered the land and seas of the West. Unwearied
navigators, they landed on the most desert islands; they overflowed the
Continent with their successive immigrations. They saw in incessant visions a
world known and unknown to be conquered for Christ. The poem of the Pilgrimage
of St. Brandan, that monkish Odyssey so celebrated in the middle ages, that
popular prelude of the Divina Commedia, shows us the Irish monks in close contact with all the dreams and
wonders of the Keltic ideal."59

The missionaries left Ireland
usually in companies of twelve, with a thirteenth as their leader. This duodecimal
economy was to represent Christ and the twelve apostles. The following are the
most prominent of these missionary bands:60

St. Columba, with twelve
brethren, to Hy in Scotland, a.d.
563.

St. Mohonna (or Macarius,
Mauricius), sent by Columba, with twelve companions, to the Picts.

St. Columbanus, with twelve
brethren, whose names are on record, to France and Germany, a.d. 612.

St. Kilian, with twelve, to
Franconia and Würzburg, a.d. 680.

St. Eloquius, with twelve, to
Belgium, a.d. 680.

St. Rudbert or Rupert, with
twelve, to Bavaria, a.d. 700.

St. Willibrord (who studied
twelve years in Ireland), with twelve, to Friesland, a.d. 692.

St. Forannan, with twelve, to
the Belgian frontier, a.d. 970.

It is remarkable that this missionary activity of the Irish Church
is confined to the period of her independence of the Church of Rome. We hear no
more of it after the Norman conquest.

The Irish Church during this
missionary period of the sixth and seventh centuries had a peculiar character,
which we learn chiefly from two documents of the eighth century, namely, the
Catalogue of the Saints of Ireland,61and the Litany of Angus the
Culdee.62

The Catalogue distinguishes
three periods and three orders of saints: secular, monastic, and eremitical.

The saints of the time of St.
Patrick were all bishops full of the Holy Ghost, three hundred and fifty in
number, founders of churches; they had one head, Christ, and one leader,
Patrick, observed one mass and one tonsure from ear to ear, and kept Easter on
the fourteenth moon after the vernal equinox; they excluded neither laymen nor
women; because, founded on the Rock of Christ, they feared not the blast of
temptation. They sprung from the Romans, Franks, Britons and Scots. This order
of saints continued for four reigns, from about a.d. 440 till 543.

The second order, likewise of
four reigns, till a.d. 599, was
of Catholic Presbyters, three hundred in number, with few bishops; they had one
head, Christ, one Easter, one tonsure, as before; but different and different
rules, and they refused the services of women, separating them from the
monasteries.

The third order of saints
consisted of one hundred holy presbyters and a few bishops, living in desert
places on herbs and water and the alms of the faithful; they had different
tonsures and Easters, some celebrating the resurrection on the 14th, some on
the 16th moon; they continued through four reigns till 665.

The first period may be called
episcopal, though in a rather non-episcopal or undiocesan sense. Angus, in his
Litany, invokes "seven times fifty [350] holy cleric bishops," whom
"the saint [Patrick] ordained," and "three hundred pure
presbyters, upon whom he conferred orders." In Nennius the number of presbyters is increased to three
thousand, and in the tripartite Life of Patrick to five thousand. These
bishops, even if we greatly reduce the number as we must, had no higher rank
than the ancient chorepiscopi or country-bishops in the Eastern Church, of whom
there were once in Asia Minor alone upwards of four hundred. Angus the Culdee
gives us even one hundred and fifty-three groups of seven bishops, each group
serving in the same church. Patrick, regarding himself as the chief bishop of
the whole Irish people, planted a church wherever he made a few converts and
could obtain a grant from the chief of a clan, and placed a bishop ordained by
himself over it. "It was a congregational and tribal episcopacy, united by
a federal rather than a territorial tie under regular jurisdiction. During
Patrick's life, he no doubt exercised a superintendence over the whole; but we do
not see any trace of the metropolitan jurisdiction of the church of Armagh over
the rest."63

The second period was monastic
and missionary. All the presbyters and deacons were monks. Monastic life was
congenial to the soil, and had its antecedents in the brotherhoods and
sisterhoods of the Druids.64 It was
imported into Ireland probably from France, either directly through Patrick, or
from the monastery of St. Ninian at Galloway, who himself derives it from St.
Martin of Tours.65 Prominent
among these presbyter-monks are the twelve apostles of Ireland headed by St.
Columba, who carried Christianity to Scotland in 563, and the twelve companions
of Columbanus, who departed from Ireland to the Continent about 612. The most
famous monastery was that of Bennchar, or Bangor, founded a.d. 558 by Comgall in the county of
Down, on the south side of Belfast Lough. Comgall had four thousand monks under
his care.66 From
Bangor proceeded Columbanus and other evangelists.

By a primitive Keltic monastery
we must not understand an elaborate stone structure, but a rude village of
wooden huts or bothies (botha) on
a river, with a church (ecclais),
a common eating-hall, a mill, a hospice, the whole surrounded by a wall of
earth or stone. The senior monks gave themselves entirely to devotion and the
transcribing of the Scriptures. The younger were occupied in the field and in mechanical
labor, or the training of the rising generation. These monastic communities
formed a federal union, with Christ as their invisible head. They were training
schools of the clergy. They attracted converts from the surrounding heathen
population, and offered them a refuge from danger and violence. They were
resorted to by English noblemen, who, according to Bede, were hospitably
received, furnished with books, and instructed. Some Irish clergymen could read
the Greek Testament at a time when Pope Gregory J. was ignorant of Greek. There
are traces of an original Latin version of the Scriptures differing from the
Itala and Vulgate, especially in Patrick's writings.67 But "there is no trace anywhere of any Keltic version of the
Bible or any part of it. St. Chrysostom's words have been misunderstood to
support such a supposition, but without ground."68 If there had been such a translation, it would have been of little
use, as the people could not read it, and depended for their scanty knowledge
of the word of God on the public lessons in the church.

The "Book of Armagh,"
compiled by Ferdomnach, a scribe or learned monk of Armagh, in 807, gives us
some idea of the literary state of the Irish Church at that time.69 It contains the oldest extant memoirs of St. Patrick, the
Confession of St. Patrick, the Preface of Jerome to the New Testament, the
Gospels, Epistles, Apocalypse and Acts, with some prefaces chiefly taken from
the works of Pelagius, and the Life of St. Martin of Tours by Sulpicius
Severus, with a short litany on behalf of the writer.

In the ninth century John Scotus
Erigena, who died in France, 874, startled the Church with his rare, but
eccentric, genius and pantheistic speculations. He had that power of quick
repartee for which Irishmen are distinguished to this day. When asked by Charles
the Bald at the dinner-table, what was the difference between a Scot and a Sot
(quid distat
inter Scottum et Sottum?), John replied: "Nothing at all but the table, please your
Majesty."

§ 16. Subjection of Ireland to English and Roman Rule.

The success of the Roman mission
of Augustin among the Anglo-Saxons encouraged attempts to bring the Irish
Church under the papal jurisdiction and to force upon it the ritual observances
of Rome. England owes a good deal of her Christianity to independent Irish and Scotch
missionaries from Bangor and Iona; but Ireland (as well as Germany) owes her
Romanism, in great measure, to England. Pope Honorius (who was afterwards
condemned by the sixth oecumenical council for holding the Monothelite heresy)
addressed to the Irish clergy in 629 an exhortation—not, however, in the tone
of authoritative dictation, but of superior wisdom and experience—to conform to
the Roman mode of keeping Easter. This is the first known papal encyclical
addressed to that country. A Synod was held at Magh-Lene, and a deputation sent
to the Pope (and the three Eastern patriarchs) to ascertain the foreign usages
on Easter. The deputation was treated with distinguished consideration in Rome,
and, after three years' absence, reported in favor of the Roman cycle, which
indeed rested on a better system of calculation. It was accordingly adopted in
the South of Ireland, under the influence of the learned Irish ecclesiastic
Cummian, who devoted a whole year to the study of the controversy. A few years
afterwards Thomian, archbishop and abbot of Armagh (from 623 to 661), and the
best Irish scholar of his age, introduced, after correspondence with the Pope,
the Roman custom in the North, and thereby promoted his authority in opposition
to the power of the abbot of Iona, which extended over a portion of Ireland,
and strongly favored the old custom. But at last Abbot Adamnan likewise yielded
to the Roman practice before his death (704).

The Norman conquest under
William I., with the sanction of the Pope, united the Irish Church still more
closely to Rome (1066). Gregory VII., in an encyclical letter to the king,
clergy and laity of Ireland (1084)., boldly, challenged their obedience to the
Vicar of the blessed Peter, and invited them to appeal to him in all matters
requiring arbitration.

The archbishops of Canterbury,
Lanfranc and Anselm, claimed and exercised a sort of supervision over the three
most important sea-ports, Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick, on the ground that
the Norman settlers applied to them for bishops and priests. Their influence
was exerted in favor of conformity to Rome. Clerical celibacy was more
generally introduced, uniformity in ritual established, and the large number of
bishoprics reduced to twenty-three under two archbishops, Armagh for the North
and Cashel for the South; while the bishop of Dublin was permitted to remain
under the care of the archbishop of Canterbury. This reorganization of the
polity in the interest of the aggrandizement of the hierarchy was effected
about 1112 at the synod of Rathbreasail, which was attended by 58 bishops, 317
priests, a large number of monks, and King Murtogh O'Brien with his nobles.70

At last Ireland was invaded and
conquered by England under Henry II., with the effectual aid of Pope Adrian
IV.—the only Englishman that sat on the papal throne. In a curious bull of
1155, he justified and encouraged the intended invasion in the interest of the
papacy, and sent the king the ring of investiture as Lord of Ireland calling
upon that licentious monarch to "extirpate the nurseries of vice" in
Ireland, to "enlarge the borders of the (Roman) Church," and to
secure to St. Peter from each house "the annual pension of one penny"
(equal in value in the twelfth century to at least two or three shillings of
our present currency).71 Henry
carried out his design in 1171, and with a strong military force easily subdued
the whole Irish nation, weakened and distracted by civil wars, to British rule,
which has been maintained ever since. A Synod at Armagh regarded the
subjugation as a righteous judgment for the sins of the people, and especially
for the slave trade. The bishops were the first to acknowledge Henry, hoping to
derive benefit from a foreign régime, which freed them from petty tyrants at
home. A Synod of Cashel in 1172, among other regulations, ordered that all
offices of the church should hereafter in all parts of Ireland be conformed to
the observances of the Church of England. A papal legate henceforward was
constantly residing in Ireland. Pope Alexander III. was extremely gratified
with this extension of his dominion, and in September, 1172, in the same tone
of sanctimonious arrogance) issued a brief confirming the bull of Adrian, and
expressing a hope that "the barbarous nation" would attain under the
government of Henry "to some decency of manners;" he also wrote three
epistles—one to Henry II., one to the kings and nobles of Ireland, and one to
its hierarchy—enjoining obedience of Ireland to England, and of both to the see
of St. Peter.72

§ 17. The Conversion of Scotland. St. Ninian and St. Kentigern.

See the works of Skene (the second vol.), Reeves, McLauchan, Ebrard,
Cunningham, mentioned in § 7.

Also Dr. Reeves: The
Culdees of the British Islands as they appear in History, 1864.

Scotland (Scotia) before the
tenth century was comprised in the general appellation of Britain (Britannia),
as distinct from Ireland (Hibernia). It was known to the Romans as Caledonia,73to the Kelts as Alban; but the
name of Scotia was exclusively appropriated to Ireland till the tenth century.
The independent history of Scotland begins with the establishment of the
Scottish monarchy in the ninth century. At first it was a purely Keltic
kingdom; but in the course of time the Saxon race and feudal institutions
spread over the country, and the Keltic tribes retreated to the mountains and
western islands. The names of Scot and Scotch passed over to the English-speaking
people and their language; while the Keltic language, formerly known as Scotch,
became known as Irish.

The Keltic history of Scotland
is full of fable, and a battlefield of Romanists and Protestants, Episcopalians
and Presbyterians, who have claimed it for their respective systems of doctrine
and church-polity. It must be disentangled from the sectarian issues of the
Culdean controversy. The historian is neither a polemic nor an apologist, and
should aim at nothing but the truth.

Tertullian says, that certain
places in Britain which the Romans could not conquer were made subject to
Christ. It is quite likely that the first knowledge of Christianity reached the
Scots and Picts from England; but the constant wars between them and the
Britons and the decline of the Roman power were unfavorable to any mission
work.

The mission of Palladius to
Scotland by Pope Caelestius is as vague and uncertain as his mission to Ireland
by the same Pope, and is strongly mixed up with the mission of Patrick. An
Irish colony from the North-Eastern part of Ulster, which had been
Christianized by Patrick, settled in Scotland towards the close of the fifth
century, and continued to spread along the coasts of Argyle and as far as the
islands of Mull and Iona, until its progress was checked by the Northern Picts.

The first distinct fact in the
church history of Scotland is the apostolate of St. Ninian at
the close of the fourth century, during the reign of Theodosius in the East. We
have little reliable information of him. The son of a British king, he devoted
himself early to the ministry of Christ. He spent some time in Rome, where the
Pope commissioned him to the apostolate among the heathen in Caledonia, and in
Gaul with Bishop Martin of Tours, who deserves special praise for his protest
against the capital punishment of heretics in the case of the Priscillianists.
He began the evangelization of the Southern Picts in the Eastern districts of
modern Scotland. He built a white stone church called "Candida Casa,"
at Whittern (Quhithern, Witerna) in Galloway, on the South-Westem border of
Scotland by the sea side, and dedicated it to the memory of St. Martin, who had
died in that year (397).74 This was
the beginning of "the Great Monastery" ("Magnum
Monasterium") or monastery of Rosnat, which exerted a civilizing and
humanizing influence on the surrounding country, and annually attracted
pilgrims from England and Scotland to the shrine of St. Ninian. His life has
been romanized and embellished with legends. He made a newborn infant indicate
its true father, and vindicate the innocence of a presbyter who had been
charged by the mother with the crime of violation; he caused leeks and herbs to
grow in the garden before their season; he subdued with his staff the winds and
the waves of the sea; and even his relics cured the sick, cleansed the lepers, and
terrified the wicked, "by all which things," says Ailred, his
biographer, "the faith of believers is confirmed to the praise and glory
of Christ."

St. Kentigern (d. Nov. 13, 603), also called St. Mungo
(the gracious one),75the first bishop of Glasgow, labored in the sixth
century for the conversion of the people in Cumberland, Wales, and on the
Clyde, and re-converted the Picts, who had apostatized from the faith. He was
the grandson of a heathen king in Cumbria or Strathclyde, the son of a
Christian, though unbaptized mother. He founded a college of Culdees or secular
monks, and several churches. He wore a hair shirt and garment of goat-skin,
lived on bread and vegetables, slept on a rocky couch and a stony pillow, like
Jacob, rose in the night to sing psalms, recited in the morning the whole
psalter in a cold stream, retired to desert places during Lent, living on
roots, was con-crucified with Christ on Good Friday, watched before the tomb,
and spent Easter in hilarity and joy. He converted more by his silence than his
speech, caused a wolf and a stag to drag the plough, raised grain from a field
sown with sand, kept the rain from wetting his garments, and performed other
marvels which prove the faith or superstition of his biographers in the twelfth
century. Jocelyn relates also, that Kentigern went seven times to Rome, and
received sundry privileges and copies of the Bible from the Pope. There is,
however, no trace of such visits in the works of Gregory I., who was more
interested in the Saxon mission than the Scotch. Kentigern first established
his episcopal chair in Holdelm (now Hoddam), afterwards in Glasghu (Glasgow).
He met St. Columba, and exchanged with him his pastoral stave.76 He attained to the age of one hundred and eighty-five years, and
died between a.d. 601 and 612
(probably 603).77 He is
buried in the crypt of the cathedral of St. Mungo in Glasgow, the best
preserved of mediaeval cathedrals in Scotland.

St.
Cuthbert (d. March
20, 687), whose life has been written by Bede, prior of the famous monastery of
Mailros (Melrose), afterwards bishop of Lindisfarne, and last a hermit, is
another legendary saint of Scotland, and a number of churches are traced to him
or bear his name.78

§ 18. St. Columba and the Monastery of Iona.

John Jamieson (D.
D.): An Historical Account of the Ancient Culdees of Iona, and of their
Settlements in Scotland, England, and Ireland. Edinb., 1811 (p. 417).

Saint
Columba or Columbcille, (died June 9, 597) is the
real apostle of Scotland. He is better known to us than Ninian and Kentigern.
The account of Adamnan (624-704), the ninth abbot of Hy, was written a century
after Columba's death from authentic records and oral traditions, although it
is a panegyric rather than a history. Later biographers have romanized him like
St. Patrick. He was descended from one of the reigning families of Ireland and
British Dalriada, and was born at, Gartan in the county of Donegal about a.d. 521. He received in baptism the
symbolical name Colum, or in Latin Columba (Dove, as the symbol of the Holy Ghost), to which was
afterwards added cille
(or kill,
i.e. "of the church," or "the dove of the cells," on
account of his frequent attendance at public worship, or, more probably, for
his being the founder of many churches.79 He entered the monastic seminary of Clonard, founded by St.
Finnian, and afterwards another monastery near Dublin, and was ordained a
priest. He planted the church at Derry in 545, the monastery of Darrow in 553,
and other churches. He seems to have fondly clung all his life to his native
Ireland, and to the convent of Derry. In one of his elegies, which were
probably retouched by the patriotism of some later Irish bard, he sings:

In 563, the forty-second year of
his age, Columba prompted by a passion for travelling and a zeal for the spread
of Christianity,81sailed with twelve fellow-apostles to the West of
Scotland, possibly on invitation of the provincial king, to whom he was related
by blood. He was presented with the island of Hy, commonly called Iona,82near the Western coast of
Scotland about fifty miles West from Oban. It is an inhospitable island, three
miles and a half long and a mile and a half broad, partly cultivated, partly
covered with hill pasture, retired dells, morass and rocks, now in possession
of the Duke of Argyll, numbering about three hundred Protestant inhabitants, an
Established Presbyterian Church, and a Free Church. The neighboring island of
Staffa, though smaller and uninhabited, is more interesting to the ordinary
tourist, and its Fingal's Cave is one of the most wonderful specimens of the
architectural skill of nature; it looks like a Gothic cathedral, 66 feet high,
42 feet broad, and 227 feet long, consisting of majestic basalt columns, an
arched roof, and an open portal towards the ocean, which dashes in and out in a
constant succession of waves, sounding solemn anthems in this unique temple of
nature. Columba and his fellow-monks must have passed it on their missionary
wanderings; but they were too much taken up with heaven to look upon the
wonders of the earth, and the cave remained comparatively unknown to the world
till 1772. Those islands wore the same aspect in the sixth century as now, with
the exception of the woods, which have disappeared. Walter Scott (in the
"Lord of the Isles") has thrown the charm of his poetry over the
Hebridean archipelago, from which proceeded the Christianization of Scotland.83

By the labors of Columba and his
successors, Iona has become one of the most venerable and interesting spots in
the history of Christian missions. It was a light-house in the darkness of
heathenism. We can form no adequate conception of the self-denying zeal of
those heroic missionaries of the extreme North, who, in a forbidding climate
and exposed to robbers and wild beasts, devoted their lives to the conversion
of savages. Columba and his friends left no monuments of stone and wood;
nothing is shown but the spot on the South of the island where he landed, and
the empty stone coffin where his body was laid together with that of his
servant; his bones were removed afterwards to Dunkeld. The old convent was
destroyed and the monks were killed by the wild Danes and Norsemen in the tenth
century. The remaining ruins of Iona—a cathedral, a chapel, a nunnery, a
graveyard with the tombstones of a number of Scottish and Norwegian and Irish
kings, and three remarkable carved crosses, which were left of three hundred
and sixty that (according to a vague tradition) were thrown into the sea by the
iconoclastic zeal of the Reformation—are all of the Roman Catholic period which
succeeded the original Keltic Christianity, and which lived on its fame. During
the middle ages Iona was a sort of Jerusalem of the North, where pilgrims loved
to worship, and kings and noblemen desired to be buried. When the celebrated
Dr. Johnson, in his Tour to the Hebrides, approached Iona, he felt his piety
grow warmer. No friend of missions can visit that lonely spot, shrouded in
almost perpetual fog, without catching new inspiration and hope for the
ultimate triumph of the gospel over all obstacles.84

The arrival of Columba at Iona
was the beginning of the Keltic church in Scotland. The island was at that time
on the confines of the Pictic and Scotic jurisdiction, and formed a convenient
base for missionary labors among the Scots, who were already Christian in name,
but needed confirmation, and among the Picts, who were still pagan, and had
their name from painting their bodies and fighting naked. Columba directed his
zeal first to the Picts; he visited King Brude in his fortress, and won his
esteem and co-operation in planting Christianity among his people. "He
converted them by example as well as by word" (Bede). He founded a large
number of churches and monasteries in Ireland and Scotland directly or through
his disciples.85 He was
involved in the wars so frequent in those days, when even women were required
to aid in battle, and he availed himself of military force for the overthrow of
paganism. He used excommunication very freely, and once pursued a plunderer
with maledictions into the sea until the water reached to his knees. But these
rough usages did not interfere with the veneration for his name. He was only a
fair type of his countrymen. "He had," says Montalembert, "the
vagabond inclination, the ardent, agitated, even quarrelsome character of the
race." He had the "perfervidum ingenium Scotorum." He was manly, tall and handsome, incessantly
active, and had a sonorous and far-reaching voice, rolling forth the Psalms of
David, every syllable distinctly uttered. He could discern the signs of the
weather. Adamnan ascribes to him an angelic countenance, a prophetic
fore-knowledge and miracles as great as those performed by Christ, such as
changing water into wine for the celebration of the eucharist, when no wine
could be obtained, changing bitter fruit into sweet, drawing water from a rock,
calming the storm at sea, and curing many diseases. His biography instead of
giving solid facts, teems with fabulous legends, which are told with childlike
credulity. O'Donnell's biography goes still further. Even the pastoral staff of
Columba, left accidentally upon the shore of Iona, was transported across the
sea by his prayers to meet its disconsolate owner when he landed somewhere in
Ireland.86

Columba died beside the altar in
the church while engaged in his midnight devotions. Several poems are ascribed
to him—one in praise of the natural beauties of his chosen island, and a
monastic rule similar to that of St. Benedict; but the "regula ac praecepta" of Columba, of which
Wilfrid spoke at the synod of Whitby, probably mean discipline or observance
rather than a written rule.87

The church establishment of
Columba at Iona belongs to the second or monastic period of the Irish church,
of which it formed an integral part. It consisted of one hundred and fifty
persons under the monastic rule. At the head of it stood a presbyter-abbot, who
ruled over the whole province, and even the bishops, although the episcopal
function of ordination was recognized.88 The monks were a family of brethren living in common. They were
divided into three classes: the seniors, who attended to the religious services,
instruction, and the transcribing of the Scriptures; the middle-aged, who were
the working brethren, devoted to agriculture, the tending of the cattle, and
domestic labor; and the youth, who were alumni under instruction. The dress
consisted of a white tunica or under garment, and a camilla or outer garment
and hood made of wool. Their food was bread, milk, eggs, fish, and on Sundays
and festivals mutton or beef. The doctrinal views and ecclesiastical customs as
to the observance of Easter and the tonsure were the same as among the Britons
and the Irish in distinction from the Roman system introduced by Augustin among
the Saxons.89

The monastery of Iona, says
Bede, held for a long time the pre-eminence over the monasteries and churches
of the Picts and Northern Scots. Columba's successors, he adds, were
distinguished for their continency, their love of God, and strict attention to
their rules of discipline, although they followed "uncertain cycles in
their computation of the great festival (Easter), because they were so far away
from the rest of the world, and had none to supply them with the synodical
decrees on the paschal observance; wherefore they only practised such works of
piety and chastity as they could learn from the prophetical, evangelical, and
apostolical writings. This manner of keeping Easter continued among them for a
hundred and fifty years, till the year of our Lord's incarnation 715."90

Adamnan (d. 704), the ninth
successor of Columba, in consequence of a visit to the Saxons, conformed his
observance of Easter to the Roman Church; but his brethren refused to follow
him in this change. After his death, the community of Iona became divided on
the Easter question, until the Columban monks, who adhered to the old custom,
were by royal command expelled (715). With this expulsion terminates the
primacy of Iona in the kingdom of the Picts.

The monastic church was broken
up or subordinated to the hierarchy of the secular clergy.

§ 19. The Culdees.

After the expulsion of the
Columban monks from the kingdom of the Picts in the eighth century, the term Culdee or Ceile De, or Kaledei, first appears in history, and
has given rise to much controversy and untenable theories.91 It is of doubtful origin, but probably means servants or
worshippers of God.92 it was
applied to anchorites, who, in entire seclusion from society, sought the
perfection of sanctity. They succeeded the Columban monks. They afterwards
associated themselves into communities of hermits, and were finally brought
under canonical rule along with the secular clergy, until at length the name of
Culdee became almost synonymous with that of secular canon.

The term Culdee has been
improperly applied to the whole Keltic church, and a superior purity has been
claimed for it.

There is no doubt that the
Columban or the Keltic church of Scotland, as well as the early Irish and the
early British churches, differed in many points from the mediaeval and modern
church of Rome, and represent a simpler and yet a very active missionary type
of Christianity.

The leading peculiarities of the
ancient Keltic church, as distinct from the Roman, are:

1. Independence of the Pope.
Iona was its Rome, and the Abbot of Iona, and afterwards of Dunkeld, though a
mere Presbyter, ruled all Scotland.

2. Monasticism ruling supreme,
but mixed with secular life, and not bound by vows of celibacy; while in the
Roman church the monastic system was subordinated to the hierarchy of the
secular clergy.

3. Bishops without dioceses and
jurisdiction and succession.

4. Celebration of the time of
Easter.

5. Form of the tonsure.

It has also been asserted, that
the Kelts or Culdees were opposed to auricular confession, the worship of
saints, and images, purgatory, transubstantiation, the seven sacraments, and
that for this reason they were the forerunners of Protestantism.

But this inference is not
warranted. Ignorance is one thing, and rejection of an error from superior
knowledge is quite another thing. The difference is one of form rather than of
spirit. Owing to its distance and isolation from the Continent, the Keltic
church, while superior to the churches in Gaul and Italy—at least during the sixth
and seventh centuries—in missionary zeal and success, was left behind them in
other things, and adhered to a previous stage of development in truth and
error. But the general character and tendency of both during that period were
essentially different from the genius of Protestant Christianity. We find among
the Kelts the same or even greater love for monasticism and asceticism the same
superstitious belief in incredible miracles, the same veneration for relics (as
the bones of Columba and Aidan, which for centuries were carried from place to
place), the same scrupulous and narrow zeal for outward forms and ceremonies
(as the observance of the mere time of Easter, and the mode of monastic
tonsure), with the only difference that the Keltic church adhered to an older
and more defective calendar, and to the semi-circular instead of the circular
tonsure. There is not the least evidence that the Keltic church had a higher
conception of Christian freedom, or of any positive distinctive principle of
Protestantism, such as the absolute supremacy of the Bible in opposition to
tradition, or justification by faith without works, or the universal priesthood
of all believers.93

Considering, then, that the
peculiarities of the Keltic church arose simply from its isolation of the main
current of Christian history, the ultimate triumph of Rome, with all its
incidental evils, was upon the whole a progress in the onward direction.
Moreover, the Culdees degenerated into a state of indolence and stagnation
during the darkness of the ninth and tenth centuries, and the Danish invasion,
with its devastating and disorganizing influences. We still find them in the
eleventh century, and frequently at war with the Roman clergy about landed
property, tithes and other matters of self-interest, but not on matters of
doctrine, or Christian life. The old Culdee convents of St. Andrews Dunkeld,
Dunblane and Brechin were turned into the bishop's chapter with the right of
electing the bishop. Married Culdees were gradually supplanted by
Canons-Regular. They lingered longest in Brechin, but disappeared in the thirteenth
century. The decline of the Culdees was the opportunity of Rome. The Saxon
priests and monks, connected with the more civilized countries, were very
active and aggressive, building cathedrals, monasteries, hospitals, and getting
possession of the land.

§ 20. Extinction of the Keltic Church, and Triumph of Rome under
King David I.

The turning-point in the history
of the Scotch church is the reign of the devout Saxon queen St. Margaret, one
of the best queens of Scotland (1070-1093). She exerted unbounded influence
over her illiterate husband, Malcolm III., and her sons. She was very
benevolent, self-denying, well versed in the Scriptures, zealous in reforming
abuses, and given to excessive fasting, which undermined her constitution and
hastened her death. "ln St. Margaret we have an embodiment of the spirit
of her age. What ostentatious humility, what almsgiving, what prayers! What piety, had it only been freed from the
taint of superstition! The Culdees were
listless and lazy, while she was unwearied in doing good. The Culdees met her
in disputation, but, being ignorant, they were foiled. Death could not contend
with life. The Indian disappears before the advance of the white man. The
Keltic Culdee disappeared before the footsteps of the Saxon priest."94

The change was effected by the
same policy as that of the Norman kings towards Ireland. The church was placed
upon a territorial in the place of a tribal basis, and a parochial system and a
diocesan episcopacy was substituted for the old tribal churches with their
monastic jurisdiction and functional episcopacy. Moreover the great religious
orders of the Roman Church were introduced and founded great monasteries as
centres of counter-influence. And lastly, the Culdees were converted from
secular into regular Canons and thus absorbed into the Roman system. When
Turgot was appointed bishop of St. Andrews, a.d.
1107 "the whole rights of the Keledei over the whole kingdom of Scotland
passed to the bishopric of St. Andrews."

From the time of Queen Margaret
a stream of Saxons and Normans poured into Scotland, not as conquerors but as
settlers, and acquired rapidly, sometimes by royal grant, sometimes by marriage,
the most fertile districts from the Tweed to the Pentland Firth. From these
settlers almost every noble family of Scotland traces its descent. They brought
with them English civilization and religion.

The sons and successors of
Margaret enriched the church by magnificent endowments. Alexander I. founded
the bishoprics of Moray and Dunkeld. His younger brother, David I., the sixth
son of Malcolm III., who married Maud, a grand-niece of William the Conqueror
(1110) and ruled Scotland from 1124 to 1153, founded the bishoprics of Ross,
Aberdeen, Caithness, and Brechin, and several monasteries and religious houses.
The nobility followed his example of liberality to the church and the hierarchy
so that in the course of a few centuries one half of the national wealth passed
into the hands of the clergy, who were at the same time in possession of all
the learning.

In the latter part of David's
reign an active crusade commenced against the Culdee establishments from St.
Andrews to Iona, until the very name gradually disappeared; the last mention
being of the year 1332, when the usual formula of their exclusion in the
election of a bishop was repeated.

Thus the old Keltic Church came to an end, leaving no vestiges
behind it, save here and there the roofless walls of what had been a church,
and the numerous old burying-grounds to the use of which the people still cling
with tenacity, and where occasionally an ancient Keltic cross tells of its
former state. All else has disappeared; and the only records we have of their
history are the names of the saints by whom they were founded preserved in old
calendars, the fountains near the old churches bearing their name, the village
fairs of immemorial antiquity held on their day, and here and there a few lay
families holding a small portion of land, as hereditary custodiers of the
pastoral staff, or other relic of the reputed founder of the church, with some
small remains of its jurisdiction."95

We now proceed to the conversion
of the Continental Teutons, especially those of France and Germany.

The first wholesale conversions
of the Germanic or Teutonic race to the Christian religion took place among the
Goths in the time when Arianism was at the height of power in the East Roman
empire. The chief agents were clerical and other captives of war whom the Goths
in their raids carried with them from the provinces of the Roman empire and
whom they learned to admire and love for their virtue and supposed miraculous
power. Constantine the Great entered into friendly relations with them, and is
reported by Eusebius and Socrates to have subjected them to the cross of
Christ. It is certain that some ecclesiastical organization was effected at
that time. Theophilus, a bishop of the Goths, is mentioned among the fathers of
the Council of Nicaea, 325.

The real apostle of the Goths is
Ulifilas,96who was consecrated bishop in
348 at Constantinople, and died there in 381, aged seventy years. He invented
the Gothic alphabet, and translated the Bible into Gothic, but was an Arian, or
rather a semi-Arian, who regarded Christ as a secondary God and the Holy Spirit
merely as a sanctifying power.97

Arianism spread with great
rapidity among the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Burgundians, and Vandals. This
heretical form of Christianity, however, was more a matter of accident than
preference and conviction among the Germans, and soon gave way to orthodoxy
when they became acquainted with it. When Alaric, the famous king of the
Visigoths, captured Rome (410), he treated the city with marked leniency, which
Augustin justly traced to the influence of the Christian faith even in
heretical form. The Vandals, the rudest among the Teutonic tribes, made an
exception; they fiercely persecuted the orthodox Christians in North Africa
(since 430) and desolated this once flourishing field of the Catholic Church,
the scene of the immortal labors of St. Augustin. Their kingdom was destroyed
under Justinian (534), but the Catholic Church never rose from its ruins, and
the weak remnant was conquered by the sword of Islâm (670).

Chrysostom made a noble effort
to convert the Eastern Goths from Arianism to Catholicity, but his mission
ceased after his death (407).

The conversion of the Franks to
Catholic christianity and various political circumstances led to the
abandonment of Arianism among the other Germanic tribes. The Burgundians who
spread from the Rhine to the Rhone and Saone, embraced Catholic Christianity in
517, and were incorporated into the French kingdom in 534. The Suevi who spread
from Eastern Germany into France and Spain, embraced the Catholic faith in 550.
The Visigoths in Spain, through their king, Reccared the Catholic, subscribed
an orthodox creed at the third Council of Toledo, a.d. 589, but the last of the Gothic kings, Roderic, was
conquered by the Saracens, breaking into Spain from Africa, in the bloody
battle of Xeres de la Frontera, a.d.
711.

The last
stronghold of Arianism were the Longobards or Lombards, who conquered Northern
Italy (still called Lombardy) and at first persecuted the Catholics. They were
converted to the orthodox faith by the wise influence of Pope Gregory I.
(590616), and the Catholic queen Theodelinde (d. 625) whose husband Agilulf
(590-616) remained Arian, but allowed his son Adelwald to be baptized and
brought up in the Catholic Church. An Arian reaction followed, but Catholicism
triumphed under Grimoald (662-671), and Liutprand (773-774). Towards the close
of the eighth century, Pepin and Charlemagne, in the interest of France and the
papacy, destroyed the independence of the Lombards after a duration of about
two hundred years, and transferred the greater part of Italy to the Eastern
empire and to the Pope. In these struggles the Popes, being then (as they have
been ever since) opposed from hierarchical interest to the political unity of
Italy, aided the Franks and reaped the benefit.

Comp. also Henri Martin: Histoire de France;
Sir James Stephen: Lectures on
the History of France (Lond. 1859); Guizot:
Histoire de la civilization en France (1830 sqq.), and his Histoire
de France, 1870.

The Salian Franks were the first
among the Teutonic tribes which were converted to catholic or orthodox
Christianity. Hence the sovereign of France is styled by the Popes "the
oldest son of the church," and Rheims, where Clovis was baptized, is the
holy city where most of the French kings down to Charles X. (1824) were
consecrated.98 The
conversion of the Franks prepared the way for the downfall of the Arian heresy
among the other Germanic nations, and for the triumph of the papacy in the
German empire under Charlemagne.

The old Roman civilization of
Gaul, though nominally Christian, was in the last stage of consumption when the
German barbarians invaded the soil and introduced fresh blood. Several savage
tribes, even the Huns, passed through Gaul like a tempest, leaving desolation
behind them, but the Franks settled there and changed Gaul into France, as the
Anglo-Saxons changed Britain into England. They conquered the Gallo-Romans,
cruelly spoiled and almost exterminated them in the North-Eastern districts.
Before they accepted the Christianity of the conquered race, they learned their
vices. "The greatest evil of barbarian government," says Henri
Martin,99"was perhaps the influence of the greedy and
corrupt Romans who insinuated themselves into the confidence of their new
masters." To these degenerate
Christians Montalembert traces the arts of oppression and the refinements of
debauchery and perfidy which the heathen Germans added to their native
brutality. "The barbarians derived no advantage from their contact with
the Roman world, depraved as it was under the empire. They brought with them
manly virtues of which the conquered race had lost even the recollection; but
they borrowed, at the same time, abject and contagious vices, of which the
Germanic world had no conception. They found Christianity there; but before
they yielded to its beneficent influence, they had time to plunge into all the
baseness and debauchery, of a civilization corrupted long before it was
vanquished. The patriarchal system of government which characterized the ancient
Germans, in their relations with their children and slaves as well as with
their chiefs, fell into ruin in contact with that contagious depravity."100

The conversion of the Salian
Franks took place under the lead of their victorious king Chlodwig or Clovis (Ludovicus, Louis), the son of Childeric and grandson
of Merovig (hence the name of Merovingians). He ruled from the year 481 to his
death in 511. With him begins the history not only of the French empire, its
government and laws, but also of the French nation, its religion and moral
habits. He married a Christian princess, Chlotilda, a daughter of the king of
the Burgundians (493), and allowed his child to be baptized. Before the
critical battle at Tolbiac101near Cologne against the invasion of the
Allemanni, he prayed to Jesus Christ for aid after having first called upon his
own gods, and promised, in case of victory, to submit to baptism together with
his warriors. After the victory he was instructed by Bishop Remigius of Rheims.
When he heard the story of the crucifixion of Christ, he exclaimed: "Would
I had been there with my valiant Franks to avenge him!" On Christmas, in the year 496, he descended
before the cathedral of Rheims into the baptismal basin, and three thousand of
his warriors followed him as into the joys of paradise. "When they arose
from the waters, as Christian disciples, one might have seen fourteen centuries
of empire rising with them; the whole array of chivalry, the long series of the
crusades, the deep philosophy of the schools, in one word all the heroism, all
the liberty, all the learning of the later ages. A great nation was commencing
its career in the world—that nation was the Franks."102

But the change of religion had
little or no effect on the character of Clovis and his descendants, whose
history is tarnished with atrocious crimes. The Merovingians, half tigers, half
lambs, passed with astonishing rapidity from horrible massacres to passionate
demonstrations of contrition, and from the confessional back again to the
excesses of their native cruelty. The crimes of Clovis are honestly told by
such saintly biographers as Gregory of Tours and Hincmar, who feel no need of
any excuse for him in view of his services to religion. St. Remigius even
advised the war of conquest against the Visigoths, because they were Arians.

"The Franks," says a
distinguished Catholic Frenchman,103"were sad Christians. While
they respected the freedom of the Catholic faith, and made external profession
of it, they violated without scruple all its precepts, and at the same time the
simplest laws of humanity. After having prostrated themselves before the tomb
of some holy martyr or confessor; after having distinguished themselves by the
choice of an irreproachable bishop; after having listened respectfully to the
voice of a pontiff or monk, we see them, sometimes in outbreaks of fury,
sometimes by cold-blooded cruelties, give full course to the evil instincts of
their savage nature. Their incredible perversity was most apparent in the
domestic tragedies, the fratricidal executions and assassinations, of which
Clovis gave the first example, and which marked the history of his son and
grandson with an ineffaceable stain. Polygamy and perjury mingled in their
daily life with a semi-pagan superstition, and in reading these bloody
biographies, scarcely lightened by some transient gleams of faith or humility,
it is difficult to believe that, in embracing Christianity, they gave up a
single pagan vice or adopted a single Christian virtue.

"It was against this
barbarity of the soul, far more alarming than grossness and violence of
manners, that the Church triumphantly struggled. From the midst of these
frightful disorders, of this double current of corruption and ferocity, the
pure and resplendent light of Christian sanctity was about to rise. But the
secular clergy, itself tainted by the general demoralization of the two races,
was not sufficient for this task. They needed the powerful and soon
preponderating assistance of the monastic Army. It did not fail: the church and
France owe to it the decisive victory of Christian civilization over a race
much more difficult to subdue than the degenerate subjects of Rome or
Byzantium. While the Franks, coming from the North, completed the subjugation
of Gaul, the Benedictines were about to approach from the South, and
super-impose a pacific and beneficent dominion upon the Germanic barbarian
conquest. The junction and union of these forces, so unequal in their
civilizing power, were destined to exercise a sovereign influence over the
future of our country."

Among these Benedictine monks, St. Maurus
occupies the most prominent place. He left Monte Casino before the death
of St. Benedict (about 540), with four companions, crossed the Alps, founded
Glanfeuil on the Loire, the first Benedictine monastery in France, and gave his
name to that noble band of scholars who, more than a thousand years after,
enriched the church with the best editions of the fathers and other works of
sacred learning.104 He had an
interview with King Theodebert (the grandson of Clovis), was treated with great
reverence and received from him a large donation of crown lands. Monastic
establishments soon multiplied and contributed greatly to the civilization of
France.105

§ 23. Columbanus and the Irish Missionaries on the Continent.

I.
Sources.

The works of Columbanus in Patrick Fleming's Collectanea sacra (Lovanii, 1667), and in Migne: Patrolog., Tom. 87, pp. 1013-1055. His life by Jonas in the Acta Sanct. Ord. Bened., Tom. II., Sec.
II., 2-26. (Also in Fleming's Coll.)

While the Latin Benedictine
monks worked their way up from the South towards the heart of France, Keltic
missionaries carried their independent Christianity from the West to the North
of France, the banks of the Rhine, Switzerland and Lombardy; but they were
counteracted by Roman missionaries, who at last secured the control over France
and Germany as well as over the British Isles.

St. Columbanus106is the pioneer of the Irish
missionaries to the Continent. His life has been written with great minuteness
by Jonas, a monk of his monastery at Bobbio. He was born in Leinster, a.d. 543, in which year St. Benedict,
his celebrated monastic predecessor, died at Monte Casino, and was trained in
the monastery of Bangor, on the coast of Down, under the direction of St.
Comgall. Filled with missionary zeal, he left his native land with twelve
companions, and crossed over the sea to Gaul in 590,107or in 585,108several years before Augustin
landed in England. He found the country desolated by war; Christian virtue and
discipline were almost extinct. He travelled for several years, preaching and
giving an example of humility and charity. He lived for whole weeks without
other food than herbs and wild berries. He liked best the solitude of the woods
and eaves, where even the animals obeyed his voice and received his caresses.
In Burgundy he was kindly received by King Gontran, one of the grandsons of Clovis;
refused the offer of wealth, and chose a quiet retreat in the Vosges mountains,
first in a ruined Roman fort at Annegray, and afterwards at Luxeuil (Luxovium).
Here he established a celebrated monastery on the confines of Burgundy and
Austrasia. A similar institution he founded at Fontaines. Several hundred
disciples gathered around him. Luxeuil became the monastic capital of Gaul, a
nursery of bishops and saints, and the mother of similar institutions.

Columbanus drew up a monastic
rule, which in all essential points resembles the more famous rule of St.
Benedict, but is shorter and more severe. It divides the time of the monks
between ascetic exercises and useful agricultural labor, and enjoins absolute
obedience on severe penalties. It was afterwards superseded by the Benedictine
rule, which had the advantage of the papal sanction and patronage.109

The life of Columbanus in France
was embittered and his authority weakened by his controversy with the French
clergy and the court of Burgundy. He adhered tenaciously to the Irish usage of
computing Easter, the Irish tonsure and costume. Besides, his extreme severity
of life was a standing rebuke of the worldly priesthood and dissolute court. He
was summoned before a synod in 602 or 603, and defended himself in a letter
with great freedom and eloquence, and with a singular mixture of humility and
pride. He calls himself (like St. Patrick) "Columbanus, a sinner,"
but speaks with an air of authority. He pleads that he is not the originator of
those ritual differences, that he came to France, a poor stranger, for the
cause of Christ, and asks nothing but to be permitted to live in silence in the
depth of the forests near the bones of his seventeen brethren, whom he had
already seen die. "Ah! let us live with you in this Gaul, where we now
are, since we are destined to live with each other in heaven, if we are found
worthy to enter there." The letter
is mixed with rebukes of the bishops, calculations of Easter and an array of
Scripture quotations. At the same time he wrote several letters to Pope Gregory
I., one of which only is preserved in the writings of Columbanus. There is no
record of the action of the Synod on this controversy, nor of any answer of the
Pope.

The conflict with the court of
Burgundy is highly honorable to Columbanus, and resulted in his banishment. He
reproved by word and writing the tyranny of queen Brunehild (or Brunehauld) and
the profligacy of her grandson Theodoric (or Thierry II.); he refused to bless
his illegitimate children and even threatened to excommunicate the young king.
He could not be silenced by flattery and gifts, and was first sent as a
prisoner to Besançon, and then expelled from the kingdom in 610.110

But this persecution extended
his usefulness. We find him next, with his Irish friends who accompanied him,
on the lake of Zurich, then in Bregenz (Bregentium) on the lake of Constance,
planting the seeds of Christianity in those charming regions of German
Switzerland. His preaching was accompanied by burning the heathen idols.
Leaving his disciple St. Gall at Bregenz, he crossed the Alps to Lombardy, and
founded a famous monastery at Bobbio. He manfully fought there the Arian
heresy, but in a letter to Boniface IV. he defended the cause of Nestorius, as
condemned by the Fifth General Council of 553, and called upon the Pope to
vindicate the church of Rome against the charge of heresy. He speaks very
boldly to the Pope, but acknowledges Rome to be "the head of the churches
of the whole world, excepting only the singular prerogative of the place of the
Lord's resurrection" (Jerusalem).111 He died in Bobbio, Nov. 21, 615. The poetry of grateful love and
superstitious faith has adorned his simple life with various miracles.

Columbanus was a man of
considerable learning for his age. He seems to have had even some knowledge of
Greek and Hebrew. His chief works are his Regula Monastica, in ten short
chapters; seventeen Discourses; his Epistles to the Gallic Synod on the paschal
controversy, to Gregory I., and to Boniface IV.; and a few poems. The following
characteristic specimen of his ascetic view of life is from one of the
discourses: "O mortal life! how
many hast thou deceived, seduced, and blinded!
Thou fliest and art nothing; thou appearest and art but a shade; thou
risest and art but a vapor; thou fliest every day, and every day thou comest;
thou fliest in coming, and comest in flying, the same at the point of
departure, different at the end; sweet to the foolish, bitter to the wise.
Those who love thee know thee not, and those only know thee who despise thee.
What art thou, then, O human life? Thou
art the way of mortals, and not their life. Thou beginnest in sin and endest in
death. Thou art then the way of life and not life itself. Thou art only a road,
and an unequal road, long for some, short for others; wide for these, narrow
for those; joyous for some, sad for others, but for all equally rapid and
without return. It is necessary, then, O miserable human life! to fathom thee,
to question thee, but not to trust in thee. We must traverse thee without
dwelling in thee—no one dwells upon a great road; we but march over it, to
reach the country beyond."112

Several of the disciples of
Columbanus labored in eastern Helvetia and Rhaetia.

Sigisbert
separated from him
at the foot of the St. Gothard, crossed eastward over the Oberalp to the source
of the Rhine, and laid the foundation of the monastery of Dissentis in the
Grisons, which lasts to this day.

St.
Gall (Gallus), the
most celebrated of the pupils of Columbanus, remained in Switzerland, and
became the father of the monastery and city called after him, on the banks of
the river Steinach. He declined the bishopric of Constanz. His double struggle
against the forces of nature and the gods of heathenism has been embellished
with marvelous traits by the legendary poetry of the middle ages.113 When he died, ninety-five years old, a.d. 640, the whole surrounding country of the Allemanni was
nominally Christianized. The monastery of St. Gall became one of the most
celebrated schools of learning in Switzerland and Germany, where Irish and
other missionaries learned German and prepared themselves for evangelistic work
in Switzerland and Southern Germany. There Notker Balbulus, the abbot (died
912), gave a lasting impulse to sacred poetry and music, as the inventor or
chief promoter of the mediaeval Laudes or Prosae,
among which the famous "Media vita in morte sumus" still repeats in various
tongues its solemn funeral warning throughout Christendom.

Fridold
or Fridolin, who probably came from
Scotland, preached the gospel to the Allemanni in South Germany. But his life
is involved in great obscurity, and assigned by some to the time of Clovis I.
(481-511), by others more probably to that of Clovis II. (638-656).

Kilian or Kyllina, of a noble Irish family, is said to have been the
apostle of Franconia and the first bishop of Würzburg in the seventh century.

§ 24. German Missionaries before Boniface.

England derived its Anglo-Saxon
population from Germany in the fifth century, and in return gave to Germany in
the eighth century the Christian religion with a strong infusion of popery.
Germany afterwards shook off the yoke of popery, and gave to England the
Protestant Reformation. In the seventeenth century, England produced Deism,
which was the first act of modern unbelief, and the forerunner of German
Rationalism. The revival of evangelical theology and religion which followed in
both countries, established new points of contact between these cognate races, which
meet again on common ground in the Western hemisphere to commingle in the
American nationality.

The conversion of Germany to
Christianity and to Romanism was, like that of England, the slow work of
several centuries. It was accomplished by missionaries of different
nationalities, French, Scotch-Irish, English, and Greek. It began at the close
of the second century, when Irenaeus spoke of Christian congregations in the
two Germanies,114i.e. Germania prima and secunda, on
the upper and lower Rhine; and it was substantially completed in the age of
Charlemagne in the eighth century. But nearly the entire North-Eastern part of
Germany, which was inhabited mostly by Slavonic tribes, remained heathen till
the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.

We must distinguish especially
three stages: 1) the preparatory labors of Italian, French, and Scotch-Irish
missionaries; 2) the consolidating romanizing work of Boniface of England and
his successors; 3) the forcible military conversion of the Saxons under
Charlemagne. The fourth and last missionary stage, the conversion of the
Prussians and Slavonic races in North-Eastern Germany, belongs to the next
period.

The light of Christianity came
to Germany first from the Roman empire in the Roman colonies on the Rhine. At
the council of Arles in 314, there was a bishop Maternus of Cologne with his
deacon, Macrinus, and a bishop of Treves by the name of Agröcius.

In the fifth century the
mysterious Severinus from the
East appeared among the savages on the banks of the Danube in Bavaria as an
angel of mercy, walking bare-footed in mid-winter, redeeming prisoners of war,
bringing food and clothing with the comfort of the Gospel to the poor and
unfortunate, and won by his self-denying labors universal esteem. French monks
and hermits left traces of their work at St. Goar, St. Elig, Wulfach, and other
places on the charming banks of the Rhine. The efficient labors of Columbanus and his Irish companions and
pupils extended from the Vosges to South Germany and Eastern Switzerland. Willebrord, an Anglo-Saxon, brought up
in an Irish convent, left with twelve brethren for Holland (690) became the
Apostle of the Friesians, and was consecrated by the Pope the first bishop of
Utrecht (Trajectum), under the name of Clemens. He developed an extensive
activity of nearly fifty years till his death (739).

When Boniface arrived in Germany
he found nearly in all parts which he visited, especially in Bavaria and
Thuringia, missionaries and bishops independent of Rome, and his object was
fully as much to romanize this earlier Christianity, as to convert the heathen.
He transferred the conflict between the Anglo-Saxon mission of Rome and the
older Keltic Christianity of Patrick and Columba and their successors from
England to German soil, and repeated the role of Augustin of Canterbury. The
old Easter controversy disappears after Columbanus, and the chief objects of
dispute were freedom from popery and clerical marriage. In both respects,
Boniface succeeded, after a hard struggle, in romanizing Germany.

The leaders of the opposition to
Rome and to Bonifacius among his predecessors and contemporaries were Adelbert and Clemens. We know them only from the letters of Boniface,
which represent them in a very, unfavorable light. Adelbert, or Aldebert
(Eldebert), was a Gaul by nation, and perhaps bishop of Soissons; at all events
he labored on the French side of the Rhine, had received episcopal ordination,
and enjoyed great popularity from his preaching, being regarded as an apostle,
a patron, and a worker of miracles. According to Boniface, he was a second
Simon Magus, or immoral impostor, who deceived the people by false miracles and
relics, claimed equal rank with the apostles, set up crosses and oratories in
the fields, consecrated buildings in his own name, led women astray, and
boasted to have relics better than those of Rome, and brought to him by an
angel from the ends of the earth. Clemens was a Scotchman (Irishman), and
labored in East Franconia. He opposed ecclesiastical traditions and clerical
celibacy, and had two sons. He held marriage with a brother's widow to be
valid, and had peculiar views of divine predestination and Christ's descent
into Hades. Aldebert and Clemens were condemned without a hearing, and
excommunicated as heretics and seducers of the people, by a provincial Synod of
Soissons, a.d. 744, and again in
a Synod of Rome, 745, by Pope Zacharias, who confirmed the decision of
Boniface. Aldebert was at last imprisoned in the monastery of Fulda, and killed
by shepherds after escaping from prison. Clemens disappeared.115

Boniface
or Winfried116surpassed all his predecessors
on the German mission-field by the extent and result of his labors, and
acquired the name of the Apostle of Germany. He was born about 680 from a noble
family, at Kirton in Wessex the last stronghold of paganism among the Anglo-Saxon
kingdoms. He was brought up in the convent of Nutsal near Winchester, and
ordained priest at the age of thirty. He felt it his duty, to christianize
those countries from which his Anglo-Saxon forefathers had emigrated. It was a
formidable task, requiring a heroic courage and indomitable perseverance.

He sacrificed his splendid
prospects at home, crossed the channel, and began his missionary career with
two or three companions among the Friesians in the neighborhood of Utrecht in
Holland (715). His first attempt was a failure. Ratbod, the king of Friesland,
was at war with Charles Martel, and devastated the churches and monasteries
which had been founded by the Franks, and by Willibrord.

But far from being discouraged,
he was only stimulated to greater exertion. After a brief sojourn in England,
where he was offered the dignity of abbot of his convent, he left again his
native land, and this time forever. He made a pilgrimage to Rome, was cordially
welcomed by Pope Gregory II. and received a general commission to Christianize
and romanize central Europe (718). Recrossing the Alps, he visited Bavaria and
Thuringia, which had been evangelized in part by the disciples of Columban, but
he was coldly received because he represented their Christianity as insufficient,
and required submission to Rome. He turned his steps again to Friesland where
order had been restored, and assisted Willibrord, archbishop of Utrecht, for
three years. In 722 he returned to Thuringia in the wake of Charles Martel's
victorious army and preached to the heathen in Hesse who lived between the
Franks and the Saxons, between the middle Rhine and the Elbe. He founded a
convent at Amanaburg (Amöneburg) on the river Ohm.

In 723 he paid, on invitation, a
second visit to Rome, and was consecrated by Gregory II. as a missionary bishop
without a diocese (episcopus regionarius). He bound himself on the grave of St.
Peter with the most stringent oath of fealty to the Pope similar to that which
was imposed on the Italian or suburban bishops.117

From this time his work assumed
a more systematic character in the closest contact with Rome as the centre of
Christendom. Fortified with letters of commendation, he attached himself for a
short time to the court of Charles Martel, who pushed his schemes of conquest
towards the Hessians. Aided by this secular help and the Pope's spiritual
authority, he made rapid progress. By a master stroke of missionary policy he
laid the axe to the root of Teutonic heathenism; with his own hand, in the
presence of a vast assembly, he cut down the sacred and inviolable oak of the
Thunder-God at Geismar (not far from Fritzlar), and built with the planks an
oratory or church of St. Peter. His biographer, Willibald, adds that a sudden
storm from heaven came to his aid and split the oak in four pieces of equal
length. This practical sermon was the death and burial of German mythology. He
received from time to time supplies of books, monks and nuns from England. The
whole church of England took a deep interest in his work, as we learn from his
correspondence. He founded monastic colonies near Erfurt, Fritzlar, Ohrdruf,
Bischofsheim, and Homburg. The victory of Charles Martel over the Saracens at
Tours (732) checked the westward progress of Islâm and insured the triumph of
Christianity in central Europe.

Boniface was raised to the
dignity of archbishop (without a see) and papal legate by the new Pope Gregory
III. (732), and thus enabled to coerce the refractory bishops.

In 738 he made his third and
last pilgrimage to Rome with a great retinue of monks and converts, and
received authority to call a synod of bishops in Bavaria and Allemannia. On his
return he founded, in concert with Duke Odilo, four Bavarian bishoprics at
Salzburg, Freising, Passau, and Ratisbon or Regensburg (739). To these he added
in central Germany the sees of Würzburg, Buraburg (near Fritzlar), Erfurt,
Eichstädt (742). He held several synods in Mainz and elsewhere for the organization
of the churches and the exercise of discipline. The number of his baptized
converts till 739 is said to have amounted to many thousands.

In 743 he was installed
Archbishop of Mainz or Mayence (Moguntum) in the place of bishop Gervillius
(Gewielieb) who was deposed for indulging in sporting propensities and for
homicide in battle. His diocese extended from Cologne to Strasburg and even to
Coire. He would have preferred Cologne, but the clergy there feared his
disciplinary severity. He aided the sons of Charles Martel in reducing the
Gallic clergy to obedience, exterminating the Keltic element, and consolidating
the union with Rome.

In 744, in a council at
Soissons, where twenty-three bishops were present, his most energetic opponents
were condemned. In the same year, in the very heart of Germany, he laid the
foundation of Fulda, the greatest of his monasteries, which became the Monte
Casino of Germany.

In 753 he named Lull or Lullus
his successor at Mainz. Laying aside his dignities, he became once more an
humble missionary, and returned with about fifty devoted followers to the field
of the baffled labors of his youth among the Friesians, where a reaction in
favor of heathenism had taken place since the death of Willibrord. He planted
his tents on the banks of the river Borne near Dockum (between Franecker and
Groningen), waiting for a large number of converts to be confirmed. But,
instead of that, he was assailed and slain, with his companions, by armed
pagans. He met the martyr's death with calmness and resignation, June 5, 754 or
755. His bones were deposited first at Utrecht, then at Mainz, and at last in
Fulda. Soon after his death, an English Synod chose him, together with Pope
Gregory and Augustin, patron of the English church. In 1875 Pope Pius IX.
directed the Catholics of Germany and England to invoke especially the aid of
St. Boniface in the distress of modern times.

The works of Boniface are
epistles and sermons. The former refer to his missionary labors and policy, the
latter exhibit his theological views and practical piety. Fifteen short sermons
are preserved, addressed not to heathen, but to Christian converts; they reveal
therefore not so much his missionary as his edifying activity. They are without
Scripture text, and are either festal discourses explaining the history of
salvation, especially the fall and redemption of man, or catechetical
expositions of Christian doctrine and duty. We give as a characteristic
specimen of the latter, the fifteenth sermon, on the renunciation of the devil
in baptism:

Sermon
XV.

"I. Listen, my brethren,
and consider well what you have solemnly renounced in your baptism. You have
renounced the devil and all his works, and all his pomp. But what are the works
of the devil? They are pride, idolatry,
envy, murder, calumny, lying, perjury, hatred, fornication, adultery, every
kind of lewdness, theft, false witness, robbery, gluttony, drunkenness,
Slander, fight, malice, philters, incantations, lots, belief in witches and
were-wolves, abortion, disobedience to the Master, amulets. These and other
such evil things are the works of the devil, all of which you have forsworn by
your baptism, as the apostle says: Whosoever doeth such things deserves death,
and shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven. But as we believe that, by the
mercy of God, you will renounce all these things, with heart and hand, in order
to become fit for grace, I admonish you, my dearest brethren, to remember what
you have promised Almighty God.

II. For, first, you have
promised to believe in Almighty God, and in his Son, Jesus Christ, and in the
Holy Spirit, one almighty God in perfect trinity.

III. And these are the
commandments which you shall keep and fulfil: to love God, whom you profess,
with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength, and to love your
neighbor as yourselves; for on these commandments hang the whole law and the
prophets. Be patient, have mercy, be benevolent, chaste, pure. Teach your sons
to fear God; teach your whole family to do so. Make peace where you go, and let
him who sits in court; give a just verdict and take no presents, for presents
make even a wise man blind.

IV. Keep the Sabbath and go to
church-to pray, but not to prattle. Give alms according to your power, for alms
extinguish sins as water does fire. Show hospitality to travelers, visit the
sick, take care of widows and orphans, pay your tithes to the church, and do to
nobody what you would not have done to yourself. Fear God above all. Let the
servants be obedient to their masters, and the masters just to their servants.
Cling to the Lord's Prayer and the Creed, and communicate them to your own
children and to those whose baptismal sponsors you are. Keep the fast, love
what is right, stand up against the devil, and partake from time to time of the
Lord's Supper. Such are the works which God commands you to do and fulfil.

V. Believe in the advent of
Christ, the resurrection of the body, and the judgment of all men. For then the
impious shall be separated from the just, the one for the everlasting fire, the
others for the eternal life. Then begins a life with God without death, a light
without shadows, a health without sickness, a plenty without hunger, a
happiness without fear, a joy with no misgivings. Then comes the eternal glory,
in which the just shall shine like suns, for no eye has ever seen, no ear has
ever heard, no heart has ever dreamed, of all that which God has prepared for
those whom he loves.

VI. I also remind you, my
beloved brethren, that the birth-day of our Lord is approaching, in order that
you may abstain from all that is worldly or lewd or impure or bad. Spit out all
malice and hatred and envy; it is poison to your heart. Keep chaste even with
respect to your own wives. Clothe yourselves with good works. Give alms to the
poor who belong to Christ; invite them often to your feasts. Keep peace with
all, and make peace between those who are at discord. If, with the aid of
Christ, you will truly fulfil these commands, then in this life you can with
confidence approach the altar of God, and in the next you shall partake of the
everlasting bliss."118

Bonifacius combined the zeal and
devotion of a missionary with worldly prudence and a rare genius for
organization and administration. He was no profound scholar, but a practical
statesman and a strict disciplinarian. He was not a theologian, but an
ecclesiastic, and would have made a good Pope. He selected the best situations
for his bishoprics and monasteries, and his far-sighted policy has been
confirmed by history. He was a man of unblemished character and untiring
energy. He was incessantly active, preaching, traveling, presiding over Synods,
deciding perplexing questions about heathen customs and trivial ceremonies. He
wrought no miracles, such as were usually expected from a missionary in those
days. His disciple and biographer apologizes for this defect, and appeals as an
offset to the invisible cures of souls which he performed.119

The weak spot in his character
is the bigotry and intolerance which he displayed in his controversy with the
independent missionaries of the French and Scotch-Irish schools who had done
the pioneer work before him. He reaped the fruits of their labors, and
destroyed their further usefulness, which he might have secured by a liberal
Christian policy. He hated every feature of individuality and national
independence in matters of the church. To him true Christianity was identical
with Romanism, and he made Germany as loyal to the Pope as was his native England.
He served under four Popes, Gregory II., Gregory III., Zacharias, and Stephen,
and they could not have had a more devoted and faithful agent. Those who
labored without papal authority were to him dangerous hirelings, thieves and
robbers who climbed up some other way. He denounced them as false prophets,
seducers of the people, idolaters and adulterers (because they were married and
defended clerical marriage).120 He encountered from them a most determined opposition, especially
in Bavaria. In connection with his servile Romanism is his pedantic legalism
and ceremonialism. His epistles and sermons show a considerable knowledge of
the Bible, but also a contracted legalistic spirit. He has much to say about
matters of outward conformity to Roman authority and usages and about small
questions of casuistry, such as whether it was right to eat horse flesh,
rabbits, storks, meat offered to idols, to marry a widow after standing
god-father to her son, how often the sign of the cross should be made in
preaching. In his strength and his weakness, his loyalty, to Rome, and in the
importance of the work he accomplished, he resembled Augustin, the Roman
apostle of his Anglo-Saxon ancestors.

Boniface succeeded by
indomitable perseverance, and his work survived him. This must be his
vindication. In judging of him we should remember that the controversy between
him and his French and Scotch-Irish opponents was not a controversy between
Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism (which was not yet born), but between
organized Catholicism or Romanism and independent Catholicism. Mediaeval
Christianity was very weak, and required for its self-preservation a strong
central power and legal discipline. It is doubtful whether in the barbarous
condition of those times, and amid the commotions of almost constant civil
wars, the independent and scattered labors of the anti-Roman missionaries could
have survived as well and made as strong an impression upon the German nation
as a consolidated Christianity with a common centre of unity, and authority.

Roman unity was better than
undisciplined independency, but it was itself only a preparatory school for the
self-governing freedom of manhood.

After Boniface
had nearly completed his work, a political revolution took place in France
which gave it outward support. Pepin, the major domus of the corrupt
Merovingian dynasty, overthrew it with the aid of Pope Zacharias, who for his
conquest of the troublesome Lombards rewarded him with the royal crown of
France (753). Fifty years afterwards this political alliance of France and
Germany with the Italian papacy was completed by Charlemagne and Leo III., and
lasted for many centuries. Rome had the enchantment of distance, the prestige
of power and culture, and promised to furnish the strongest support to new and
weak churches. Rome was also the connecting link between mediaeval and ancient
civilization, and transmitted to the barbarian races the treasures of classical
literature which in due time led to the revival of letters and to the
Protestant Reformation.

§ 26. The Pupils of Boniface. Willibald, Gregory of Utrecht, Sturm
of Fulda.

Boniface left behind him a
number of devoted disciples who carried on his work.

Among these we mention St. Willibald, the first bishop of
Eichstädt. He was born about a.d.
700 from a noble Anglo-Saxon family and a near relative of Boniface. In his
early manhood he made a pilgrimage to Rome and to the Holy Land as far as
Damascus, spent several years among the Benedictines in Monte Casino, met
Boniface in Rome, joined him in Germany (a.d.
740) and became bishop of Eichstädt in Bavaria in 742. He directed his
attention chiefly to the founding of monasteries after the Benedictine rule. He
called to his side his brother Wunnebald, his sister Walpurgis, and other
helpers from England. He died July 7, 781 or 787. He is considered by some as
the author of the biography of Boniface; but it was probably the work of
another Willibald, a presbyter of Mainz.

Gregory, Abbot of Utrecht, was related
to the royal house of the Merovingians, educated at the court, converted in his
fifteenth year by a sermon of Boniface, and accompanied him on his journeys.
After the death of Boniface he superintended the mission among the Friesians,
but declined the episcopal dignity. In his old age he became lame, and was
carried by his pupils to wherever his presence was desired. He died in 781,
seventy-three years old.

Sturm, the first Abbot of Fulda (710
to Dec. 17, 779), was of a noble Bavarian family and educated by Boniface. With
his approval he passed with two companions through the dense beech forests of
Hesse in pursuit of a proper place for a monastery. Singing psalms, he rode on
an ass, cutting a way through the thicket inhabited by wild beasts; at night
after saying his prayers and making the sign of the cross he slept on the bare
ground under the canopy of heaven till sunrise. He met no human being except a
troupe of heathen slaves who bathed in the river Fulda, and afterwards a man
with a horse who was well acquainted with the country. He found at last a
suitable place, and took solemn possession of it in 744, after it was presented
to him for a monastery by Karloman at the request of Boniface, who joined him
there with a large number of monks, and often resorted to this his favorite
monastery. "In a vast solitude," he wrote to Pope Zacharias in 751,
"among the tribes entrusted to my preaching, there is a place where I
erected a convent and peopled it with monks who live according to the rule of
St. Benedict in strict abstinence, without flesh and wine, without intoxicating
drink and slaves, earning their living with their own hands. This spot I have
rightfully secured from pious men, especially from Karloman, the late prince of
the Franks, and dedicated to the Saviour. There I will occasionally rest my
weary limbs, and repose in death, continuing faithful to the Roman Church and
to the people to which I was sent?"121

Fulda received special
privileges from Pope Zacharias and his successors,122and became a centre of German Christianity
and civilization from which proceeded the clearing of the forests, the
cultivation of the soil, and the education of youths. The number of Benedictine
monks was increased by large re-enforcements from Monte Casino, after an
Italian journey of Sturm in 747. The later years of his life were disturbed by
a controversy with Lullus of Mainz about the bones of Boniface after his
martyrdom (755) and by calumniations of three monks who brought upon him the
displeasure of King Pepin. He was, however, reinstated in his dignity and
received the remains of his beloved teacher which repose in Fulda. Charlemagne
employed him as missionary among the Saxons. His bones were deposited in the
convent church. Pope Innocent II. canonized him, A. D, 1139.123

§ 27. The Conversion of the Saxons. Charlemagne and Alcuin. The
Heliand, and the Gospel-Harmony.

Of all the German tribes the
fierce and warlike Saxons were the last to accept the Christian religion. They
differed in this respect very much from their kinsmen who had invaded and
conquered England. But the means employed were also as different: rude force in
one case, moral suasion in the other. The Saxons inhabited the districts of
modern Hanover, Oldenburg, Brunswick, and Westphalia, which were covered with
dense forests. They had driven the Franks beyond the Weser and the Rhine, and
they were now driven back in turn by Charles Martel, Pepin, and Charlemagne.
They hated the foreign yoke of the Franks, and far-off Rome; they hated the
tithe which was imposed upon them for the support of the church. They looked
upon Christianity as the enemy of their wild liberty and independence. The
first efforts of Ewald, Suidbert, and other missionaries were fruitless. Their
conversion was at last brought about by the sword from political as well as
religious motives, and was at first merely nominal, but resulted finally in a
real change under the silent influence of the moral forces of the Christian
religion.

Charlemagne, who became master
of the French kingdom in 768, had the noble ambition to unite the German tribes
in one great empire and one religion in filial communion with Rome, but he
mistook the means. He employed material force, believing that people become
Christians by water-baptism, though baptized against their will. He thought
that the Saxons, who were the most dangerous enemies of his kingdom, must be
either subdued and Christianized, or killed. He pursued the same policy towards
them as the squatter sovereigns would have the United States government pursue
towards the wild Indians in the Western territories. Treaties were broken, and
shocking cruelties were committed on both sides, by the Saxons from revenge and
for independence, by Christians for punishment in the name of religion and
civilization. Prominent among these atrocities is the massacre of four thousand
five hundred captives at Verden in one day. As soon as the French army was
gone, the Saxons destroyed the churches and murdered the priests, for which
they were in turn put to death.

Their subjugation was a work of
thirty-three years, from 772 to 805. Widukind (Wittekind) and Albio (Abbio),
the two most powerful Saxon chiefs, seeing the fruitlessness of the resistance,
submitted to baptism in 785, with Charlemagne as sponsor.124

But the Saxons were not entirely
defeated till 804, when 10,000 families were driven from house and home and
scattered in other provinces. Bloody laws prohibited the relapse into
heathenism. The spirit of national independence was defeated, but not entirely
crushed, and broke out seven centuries afterwards in another form against the
Babylonian tyranny of Rome under the lead of the Saxon monk, Martin Luther.

The war of Charlemagne against
the Saxons was the first ominous example of a bloody crusade for the overthrow
of heathenism and the extension of the church. It was a radical departure from
the apostolic method, and diametrically opposed to the spirit of the gospel.
This was felt even in that age by the more enlightened divines. Alcuin, who
represents the English school of missionaries, and who expresses in his letters
great respect and admiration for Charlemagne, modestly protested, though
without effect, against this wholesale conversion by force, and asked him
rather to make peace with the "abominable" people of the Saxons. He
properly held that the heathen should first be instructed before they are
required to be baptized and to pay tithes; that water-baptism without faith was
of no use; that baptism implies three visible things, namely, the priest, the
body, and the water, and three invisible things, namely, the Spirit, the soul,
and faith; that the Holy Spirit regenerates the soul by faith; that faith is a
free act which cannot be enforced; that instruction, persuasion, love and
self-denial are the only proper means for converting the heathen.125

Charlemagne relaxed somewhat the
severity of his laws or capitularies after the year 797. He founded eight
bishoprics among the Saxons: Osnabrück, Münster, Minden, Paderborn, Verden,
Bremen, Hildesheim, and Halberstadt. From these bishoprics and the parochial
churches grouped around them, and from monasteries such as Fulda, proceeded
those higher and nobler influences which acted on the mind and heart.

The first monument of real Christianity
among the Saxons is the "Heliand" (Heiland, i.e., Healer,
Saviour) or a harmony of the Gospels. It is a religious epos strongly
resembling the older work of the Anglo-Saxon Caedmon on the Passion and
Resurrection. From this it no doubt derived its inspiration. For since
Bonifacius there was a lively intercourse between the church of England and the
church in Germany, and the language of the two countries was at that time
essentially the same. In both works Christ appears as the youthful hero of the human
race, the divine conqueror of the world and the devil, and the Christians as
his faithful knights and warriors. The Heliand was composed in the ninth
century by one or more poets whose language points to Westphalia as their home.
The doctrine is free from the worship of saints, the glorification of Peter,
and from ascetic excesses, but mixed somewhat with mythological reminiscences.
Vilmar calls it the only real Christian epos, and a wonderful creation of the
German genius.126

A little later (about 870)
Otfried, a Franconian, educated at Fulda and St. Gall, produced another poetic
harmony of the Gospels, which is one of the chief monuments of old high German
literature. It is a life of Christ from his birth to the ascension, and ends
with a description of the judgment. It consists of fifteen thousand rhymed
lines in strophes of four lines.

Thus the victory of Christianity
in Germany as well as it, England, was the beginning of poetry and literature,
and of true civilization,

The Christianization of
North-Eastern Germany, among the Slavonic races, along the Baltic shores in
Prussia, Livonia, and Courland, went on in the next period, chiefly through
Bishop Otto of Bamberg, the apostle of Pomerania, and the Knights of the
Teutonic order, and was completed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

F. Worsaae: Account of the Danes in England, Ireland, and Scotland. London, 1852; The Danish
Conquest of England and Normandy. London, 1863. These works are translated
from the Danish.

Scandinavia was inhabited by one
of the wildest and fiercest, but also one of the strongest and most valiant
branches of the Teutonic race, a people of robbers which grew into a people of
conquerors. Speaking the same language—that which is still spoken in
Iceland—and worshipping the same gods, they were split into a number of small
kingdoms covering the present Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Every spring, when
the ice broke in the fjords, they launched their boats or skiffs, and swept,
each swarm under the leadership of its own king, down upon the coasts of the
neighboring countries. By the rivers they penetrated far into the countries,
burning and destroying what they could not carry away with them. When autumn
came, they returned home, loaded with spoil, and they spent the winter round
the open hearth, devouring their prey. But in course of time, the swarms
congregated and formed large armies, and the robber-campaigns became organized
expeditions for conquest; kingdoms were founded in Russia, England, France, and
Sicily. In their new homes, however, the Northern vikings soon forgot both
their native language and their old gods, and became the strong bearers of new
departures of civilization and the valiant knights of Christianity.

In the Scandinavian mythology,
there were not a few ideas which the Christian missionary could use as
connecting links. It was not absolutely necessary for him to begin with a mere
negation; here, too, there was an "unknown God" and many traits
indicate that, during the eighth and ninth centuries, people throughout
Scandinavia became more and more anxious to hear something about him. When a
man died, he went to Walhall, if he had been brave, and to Niflheim, if he had
been a coward. In Walhall he lived together with the gods, in great brightness
and joy, fighting all the day, feasting all the night. In Niflheim he sat
alone, a shadow, surrounded with everything disgusting and degrading. But
Walhall and Niflheim were not to last forever. A deep darkness, Ragnarokr,
shall fall over the universe; Walhall and Niflheim shall be destroyed by fire;
the gods, the heroes, the shadows, shall perish. Then a new heaven and a new
earth shall be created by the All-Father, and he shall judge men not according
as they have been brave or cowardly, but according as they have been good or
bad. From the Eddas themseIves, it appears that, throughout Scandinavian
heathendom, there now and then arose characters who, though they would not
cease to be brave, longed to be good. The representative of this goodness, this
dim fore-shadowing of the Christian idea of holiness, was Baldur, the young god
standing on the rainbow and watching the worlds, and he was also the link which
held together the whole chain of the Walhall gods; when he died, Ragnarokr
came.

A transition from the myth of
Baldur to the gospel of Christ cannot have been very difficult to the
Scandinavian imagination; and, indeed, it is apparent that the first ideas which
the Scandinavian heathens formed of the "White Christ" were
influenced by their ideas of Baldur. It is a question, however, not yet
settled, whether certain parts of the Scandinavian mythology, as, for instance,
the above myths of Ragnarokr and Baldur, are not a reflex of Christian ideas;
and it is quite probable that when the Scandinavians in the ninth century began
to look at Christ under the image of Baldur, they had long before unconsciously
remodeled their idea of Baldur after the image of Christ.

Another point, of considerable
importance to the Christian missionary, was that, in Scandinavian heathendom,
he had no priesthood to encounter. Scandinavian paganism never became an
institution. There were temples, or at least altars, at Leire, near Roeskilde,
in Denmark; at Sigtuna, near Upsall, in Sweden, and at Moere, near Drontheim,
in Norway; and huge sacrifices of ninety-nine horses, ninety-nine cocks, and
ninety-nine slaves were offered up there every Juul-time. But every man was his
own priest. At the time when Christianity first appeared in Scandinavia, the
old religion was evidently losing its hold on the individuals and for the very
reason, that it had never succeeded in laying hold on the nation. People
continued to swear by the gods, and drink in their honor; but they ceased to
pray to them. They continued to sacrifice before taking the field or after the
victory, and to make the sign of the cross, meaning Thor's hammer, over a child
when it was named; but there was really nothing in their life, national or
individual, public or private, which demanded religious consecration. As, on
the one side, characters developed which actually went beyond the established
religion, longing for something higher and deeper, it was, on the other side,
still more frequent to meet with characters which passed by the established
religion with utter indifference, believing in nothing but their own strength.

The principal obstacle which
Christianity had to encounter in Scandinavia was moral rather than religious.
In his passions, the old Scandinavian was sometimes worse than a beast.
Gluttony and drunkenness he considered as accomplishments. But he was chaste. A
dishonored woman was very seldom heard of, adultery never. In his energy, he
was sometimes fiercer than a demon. He destroyed for the sake of destruction,
and there were no indignities or cruelties which he would not inflict upon a
vanquished enemy. But for his friend, his king, his wife, his child, he would
sacrifice everything, even life itself; and he would do it without a doubt,
without a pang, in pure and noble enthusiasm. Such, however, as his morals
were, they, had absolute sway over him. The gods he could forget, but not his
duties. The evil one, among gods and men, was he who saw the duty, but stole
away from it. The highest spiritual power among the old Scandinavians, their
only enthusiasm, was their feeling of duty; but the direction which had been
given to this feeling was so absolutely opposed to that pointed out by the
Christian morality, that no reconciliation was possible. Revenge was the
noblest sentiment and passion of man; forgiveness was a sin. The battle-field
reeking with blood and fire was the highest beauty the earth could show;
patient and peaceful labor was an abomination. It was quite natural, therefore,
that the actual conflict between Christianity and Scandinavian paganism should
take place in the field of morals. The pagans slew the missionaries, and burnt
their schools and churches, not because they preached new gods, but because
they "corrupted the morals of the people" (by averting them from
their warlike pursuits), and when, after a contest of more than a century, it
became apparent that Christianity would be victorious, the pagan heroes left
the country in great swarms, as if they were flying from some awful plague. The
first and hardest work which Christianity had to do in Scandinavia was
generally humanitarian rather than specifically religious.

During the sixth and seventh
centuries the Danes first came in contact with Christianity, partly through
their commercial intercourse with Duerstede in Holland, partly through their
perpetual raids on Ireland; and tales of the "White Christ" were
frequently told among them, though probably with no other effect than that of
wonder. The first Christian missionary who visited them and worked among them
was Willebrord. Born in Northumbria and educated within the pale of the Keltic
Kirk he went out, in 690, as a missionary to the Frises. Expelled by them he
came, about 700, to Denmark, was well received by king Yngrin (Ogendus), formed
a congregation and bought thirty Danish boys, whom he educated in the Christian
religion, and of whom one, Sigwald, is still remembered as the patron saint of
Nuremberg, St. Sebaldus. But his work seems to have been of merely temporary
effect.

Soon, however, the tremendous
activity which Charlemagne developed as a political organizer, was felt even on
the Danish frontier. His realm touched the Eyder. Political relations sprang up
between the Roman empire and Denmark, and they opened a freer and broader
entrance to the Christian missionaries. In Essehoe, in Holstein, Charlemagne
built a chapel for the use of the garrison; in Hamburg he settled Heridock as
the head of a Christian congregation; and from a passage in one of Alcuin's
letters127it appears that a conversion of the Danes did not
lie altogether outside of his plans. Under his successor, Lewis the Pious,
Harald Klak, one of the many petty kings among whom Denmark was then divided,
sought the emperor's support and decision in a family feud, and Lewis sent
archbishop Ebo of Rheims, celebrated both as a political negotiator and as a
zealous missionary, to Denmark. In 822 Ebo crossed the Eyder, accompanied by
bishop Halitgar of Cambray. In the following years he made several journeys to
Denmark, preached, baptized, and established a station of the Danish mission at
Cella Wellana, the present Welnau, near Essehoe. But he was too much occupied
with the internal affairs of the empire and the opportunity which now opened
for the Danish mission, demanded the whole and undivided energy of a great man.
In 826 Harald Klak was expelled and sought refuge with the emperor, Ebo acting
as a mediator. At Ingelheim, near Mentz, the king, the queen, their son and
their whole retinue, were solemnly baptized, and when Harald shortly after
returned to Denmark with support from the emperor, he was accompanied by that
man who was destined to become the Apostle of the North, Ansgar.

Ansgar was born about 800 (according to
general acceptation Sept. 9, 801) in the diocese of Amiens, of Frankish
parents, and educated in the abbey of Corbie, under the guidance of Adalhard.
Paschasius Radbertus was among his teachers. In 822 a missionary colony was
planted by Corbie in Westphalia, and the German monastery of Corwey or New
Corwey was founded. Hither Ansgar was removed, as teacher in the new school,
and he soon acquired great fame both on account of his powers as a preacher and
on account of his ardent piety. When still a boy he had holy visions, and was
deeply impressed with the vanity of all earthly greatness. The crown of the
martyr seemed to him the highest grace which human life could attain, and he
ardently prayed that it might be given to him. The proposition to follow king
Harald as a missionary, among the heathen Danes he immediately accepted, in
spite of the remonstrances of his friends, and accompanied by Autbert he
repaired, in 827, to Denmark, where he immediately established a missionary
station at Hedeby, in the province of Schleswig. The task was difficult, but
the beginning was not without success. Twelve young boys were bought to be
educated as teachers, and not a few people were converted and baptized. His
kindness to the poor, the sick, to all who were in distress, attracted
attention; his fervor as a preacher and teacher produced sympathy without, as
yet, provoking resistance. But in 829 king Harald was again expelled and
retired to Riustri, a possession on the mouth of the Weser, which the emperor
had given to him as a fief. Ansgar was compelled to follow him and the
prospects of the Danish mission became very dark, the more so as Autbert had to
give up any further participation in the work on account of ill health, and
return to New Corwey. At this time an invitation from the Swedish king, Björn,
gave Ansgar an opportunity to visit Sweden, and he stayed there till 831, when
the establishment of an episcopal see at Hamburg, determined upon by the diet
of Aix-le-chapelle in 831, promised to give the Danish mission a new impulse.
All Scandinavia was laid under the new see, and Ansgar was consecrated its
first bishop by bishop Drago of Metz, a brother of the emperor, with the solemn
assistance of three archbishops, Ebo of Rheims, Hetti of Treves and Obgar of
Mentz. A bull of Gregory IV.128 confirmed the whole arrangement, and Ansgar received personally
the pallium from the hands of the Pope. In 834 the emperor endowed the see with
the rich monastery of Thorout, in West Flanders, south of Bruges, and the work
of the Danish mission could now be pushed with vigor. Enabled to treat with the
petty kings of Denmark on terms of equality, and possessed of means to impress
them with the importance of the cause, Ansgar made rapid progress, but, as was
to be expected, the progress soon awakened opposition. In 834 a swarm of
heathen Danes penetrated with a fleet of six hundred small vessels into the Elb
under the command of king Horich I., and laid siege to Hamburg. The city was
taken, sacked and burnt; the church which Ansgar had built, the monastery in
which he lived, his library containing a copy of the Bible which the emperor
had presented to him, etc., were destroyed and the Christians were driven away
from the place. For many days Ansgar fled from hiding-place to hiding-place in
imminent danger of his life. He sought refuge with the bishop of Bremen, but
the bishop of Bremen was jealous, because Scandinavia had not been laid under
his see, and refused to give any assistance. The revenues of Thorout he lost,
as the emperor, Charles the Bald, gave the fief to one of his favorites. Even
his own pupils deserted him.

In this great emergency his
character shone forth in all its strength and splendor; he bore what God laid
upon him in silence and made no complaint. Meanwhile Lewis the German came to
his support. In 846 the see of Bremen became vacant. The see of Hamburg was then
united to that of Bremen, and to this new see, which Ansgar was called to fill,
a papal bull of May 31, 864, gave archiepiscopal rank. Installed in Bremen,
Ansgar immediately took up again the Danish mission and again with success. He
won even king Horich himself for the Christian cause, and obtained permission
from him to build a church in Hedeby, the first Christian church in Denmark,
dedicated to Our Lady. Under king Horich's son this church was allowed to have
bells, a particular horror to the heathens, and a new and larger church was
commenced in Ribe. By Ansgar's activity Christianity became an established and
acknowledged institution in Denmark, and not only in Denmark but also in
Sweden, which he visited once more, 848-850.

The principal feature of his
spiritual character was ascetic severity; he wore a coarse hair-shirt close to
the skin, fasted much and spent most of his time in prayer. But with this
asceticism he connected a great deal of practical energy; he rebuked the
idleness of the monks, demanded of his pupils that they should have some actual
work at hand, and was often occupied in knitting, while praying. His enthusiasm
and holy raptures were also singularly well-tempered by good common sense. To
those who wished to extol his greatness and goodness by ascribing miracles to
him, he said that the greatest miracle in his life would be, if God ever made a
thoroughly pious man out of him.129 Most prominent, however, among the spiritual features of his
character shines forth his unwavering faith in the final success of his cause
and the never-failing patience with which this faith fortified his soul. In
spite of apparent failure he never gave up his work; overwhelmed with disaster,
he still continued it. From his death-bed he wrote a letter to king Lewis to
recommend to him the Scandinavian mission. Other missionaries may have excelled
him in sagacity and organizing talent, but none in heroic patience and
humility. He died at Bremen, Feb. 3, 865, and lies buried there in the church
dedicated to him. He was canonized by Nicholas I.

Ansgar's successor in the
archiepiscopal see of Hamburg-Bremen was his friend and biographer, Rimbert, 865-888. In his time all the
petty kingdoms into which Denmark was divided, were gathered together under one
sceptre by King Gorm the Old; but this event, in one respect very favorable to
the rapid spread of Christianity, was in other respects a real obstacle to the
Christian cause as it placed Denmark, politically, in opposition to Germany,
which was the basis and only support of the Christian mission to Denmark. King
Gorm himself was a grim heathen; but his queen, Thyra Danabod, had embraced
Christianity, and both under Rimbert and his successor, Adalgar, 888-909, the
Christian missionaries were allowed to work undisturbed. A new church, the
third in Denmark, was built at Aarhus. But under Adalgar's successor, Unni,
909-936, King Gorm's fury, half political and half religious, suddenly burst
forth. The churches were burnt, the missionaries were killed or expelled, and
nothing but the decisive victory of Henry the Fowler, king of Germany, over the
Danish king saved the Christians in Denmark from complete extermination. By the
peace it was agreed that King Gorm should allow the preaching of Christianity
in his realm, and Unni took up the cause again with great energy. Between
Unni's successor, Adaldag, 936-988, and King Harald Blue Tooth, a son of Gorm
the Old, there grew up a relation which almost might be called a co-operation.
Around the three churches in Jutland: Schleswig, Ribe and Aarhus, and a fourth
in Fünen: Odense, bishoprics were formed, and Adaldag consecrated four native
bishops. The church obtained right to accept and hold donations, and instances
of very large endowments occurred.

The war between King Harald and
the German king, Otto II., arose from merely political causes, but led to the
baptism of the former, and soon after the royal residence was moved from Leire,
one of the chief centres of Scandinavian heathendom, to Roeskilde, where a
Christian church was built. Among the Danes, however, there was a large party
which was very ill-pleased at this turn of affairs. They were heathens because
heathenism was the only religion which suited their passions. They clung to
Thor, not from conviction, but from pride. They looked down with indignation
and dismay upon the transformation which Christianity everywhere effected both
of the character and the life of the people. Finally they left the country and
settled under the leadership of Palnatoke, at the mouth of the Oder, where they
founded a kind of republic, Jomsborg.

From this place they waged a
continuous war upon Christianity in Denmark for more than a decade, and with
dreadful effect. The names of the martyrs would fill a whole volume, says Adam
of Bremen. The church in Roeskilde was burnt. The bishopric of Fünen was
abolished. The king's own son, Swen, was one of the leaders, and the king
himself was finally shot by Palnatoke, 991. Swen, however, soon fell out with
the Joms vikings, and his invasion of England gave the warlike passions of the
nation another direction.

From the conquest of that
country and its union with Denmark, the Danish mission received a vigorous
impulse. King Swen himself was converted, and showed great zeal for
Christianity. He rebuilt the church in Roeskilde, erected a new church at Lund,
in Skaane, placed the sign of the cross on his coins, and exhorted, on his
death-bed, his son Canute to work for the Christianization of Denmark. The
ardor of the Hamburg-Bremen archbishops for the Danish mission seemed at this
time to have cooled, or perhaps the growing difference between the language
spoken to the north of the Eyder and that spoken to the south of that river
made missionary work in Denmark very difficult for a German preacher. Ansgar
had not felt this difference; but two centuries later it had probably become necessary
for the German missionary to learn a foreign language before entering on his
work in Denmark.

Between England and Denmark
there existed no such difference of language. King Canute the Great, during
whose reign (1019-1035) the conversion of Denmark was completed, could employ
English priests and monks in Denmark without the least embarrassment. He
re-established the bishopric of Fünen, and founded two new bishoprics in
Sealand and Skaane; and these three sees were filled with Englishmen
consecrated by the archbishop of Canterbury. He invited a number of English
monks to Denmark, and settled them partly as ecclesiastics at the churches,
partly in small missionary stations, scattered all around in the country; and
everywhere, in the style of the church-building and in the character of the
service the English influence was predominating. This circumstance, however,
did in no way affect the ecclesiastical relation between Denmark and the
archiepiscopal see of Hamburg-Bremen. The authority of the archbishop, though
not altogether unassailed, was nevertheless generally submitted to with good
grace, and until in the twelfth century an independent Scandinavian
archbishopric was established at Lund, with the exception of the above cases,
he always appointed and consecrated the Danish bishops. Also the relation to
the Pope was very cordial. Canute made a pilgrimage to Rome, and founded
several Hospitia
Danorum there.
He refused, however, to permit the introduction of the Peter's pence in
Denmark, and the tribute which, up to the fourteenth century, was annually sent
from that country to Rome, was considered a voluntary gift.

The last part of Denmark which
was converted was the island of Bornholm. It was christianized in 1060 by
Bishop Egius of Lund. It is noticeable, however, that in Denmark Christianity
was not made a part of the law of the land, such as was the case in England and
in Norway.

Just when the expulsion of
Harald Klak compelled Ansgar to give up the Danish mission, at least for the
time being, an embassy was sent by the Swedish king, Björn, to the emperor,
Lewis the Pious, asking him to send Christian missionaries to Sweden. Like the
Danes, the Swedes had become acquainted with Christianity through their wars
and commercial connections with foreign countries, and with many this
acquaintance appears to have awakened an actual desire to become Christians.
Accordingly Ansgar went to Sweden in 829, accompanied by Witmar. While crossing
the Baltic, the vessel was overtaken and plundered by pirates, and he arrived
empty handed, not to say destitute, at Björkö or Birka, the residence of King
Björn, situated on an island in the Maelarn. Although poverty, and misery were
very poor introduction to a heathen king in ancient Scandinavia, he was well
received by the king; and in Hergeir, one of the most prominent men at the
court of Birka, he found a warm and reliable friend. Hergeir built the first
Christian chapel in Sweden, and during his whole life he proved an unfailing
and powerful support of the Christian cause. After two years' successful labor,
Ansgar returned to Germany; but he did not forget the work begun. As soon as he
was well established as bishop in Hamburg, he sent, in 834, Gautbert, a nephew
of Ebo, to Sweden, accompanied by Nithard and a number of other Christian
priests, and well provided with everything necessary for the work. Gautbert
labored with great success. In Birka he built a church, and thus it became
possible for the Christians, scattered all over Sweden, to celebrate service
and partake of the Lord's Supper in their own country without going to
Duerstede or some other foreign place. But here, as in Denmark, the success of
the Christian mission aroused the jealousy and hatred of the heathen, and, at
last, even Hergeir was not able to keep them within bounds. An infuriated swarm
broke into the house of Gautbert. The house was plundered; Nithard was
murdered; the church was burnt, and Gautbert himself was sent in chains beyond
the frontier. He never returned to Sweden, but died as bishop of Osnabrück,
shortly before Ansgar. When Ansgar first heard of the outbreak in Sweden, he
was himself flying before the fury of the Danish heathen, and for several years
he was unable to do anything for the Swedish mission. Ardgar, a former hermit,
now a priest, went to Sweden, and in Birka he found that Hergeir had succeeded
in keeping together and defending the Christian congregation; but Hergeir died
shortly after, and with him fell the last defence against the attacks of the
heathen and barbarians.

Meanwhile Ansgar had been
established in the archiepiscopal see of Hamburg-Bremen. In 848, he determined
to go himself to Sweden. The costly presents he gave to king Olaf, the urgent
letters he brought from the emperor, and the king of Denmark, the magnificence
and solemnity of the appearance of the mission made a deep impression. The king
promised that the question should be laid before the assembled people, whether
or not they would allow Christianity to be preached again in the country. In
the assembly it was the address of an old Swede, proving that the god of the
Christians was stronger even than Thor, and that it was poor policy for a nation
not to have the strongest god, which finally turned the scales, and once more
the Christian missionaries were allowed to preach undisturbed in the country, .
Before Ansgar left, in 850, the church was rebuilt in Birka, and, for a number
of years, the missionary labor was continued with great zeal by Erimbert, a
nephew of Gautbert, by Ansfrid, born a Dane, and by Rimbert, also a Dane.

Nevertheless, although the
persecutions ceased, Christianity made little progress, and when, in 935,
Archbishop Unni himself visited Birka, his principal labor consisted in
bringing back to the Christian fold such members as had strayed away among the
heathen, and forgotten their faith. Half a century later, however, during the
reign of Olaf Skotkonge, the mission received a vigorous impulse. The king
himself and his sons were won for the Christian cause, and from Denmark a
number of English missionaries entered the country. The most prominent among
these was Sigfrid, who has been mentioned beside Ansgar as the apostle of the North.
By his exertions many were converted, and Christianity became a legally
recognized religion in the country beside the old heathenism. In the Southern
part of Sweden, heathen sacrifices ceased, and heathen altars disappeared. In
the Northern part, however, the old faith still continued to live on, partly
because it was difficult for the missionaries to penetrate into those wild and
forbidding regions, partly because there existed a difference of tribe between
the Northern and Southern Swedes, which again gave rise to political
differences.

The Christianization of Sweden
was not completed until the middle of the twelfth century.

§ 31. The Christianization of Norway and Iceland.

Snorre Sturleson (d. 1241): Heimskringla (i.e. Circle of Home, written first
in Icelandic), seu Historia Regum Septentrionalium, etc. Stockholm,
1697, 2 vols. The same in Icelandic, Danish, and Latin. Havn., 1777-1826; in
German by Mohnike, 1835; in English, transl. by Sam. Laing. London, 1844, 3
vols. This history of the Norwegian kings reaches from the mythological age to a.d. 1177.

Christianity was introduced in
Norway almost exclusively by the exertions of the kings, and the means employed
were chiefly violence and tricks. The people accepted Christianity not because
they had become acquainted with it and felt a craving for it, but because they
were compelled to accept it, and the result was that heathen customs and
heathen ideas lived on in Christian Norway for centuries after they had
disappeared from the rest of Scandinavia.

The first attempt to introduce
Christianity in the country was made in the middle of the tenth century by
Hakon the Good. Norway was gathered into one state in the latter part of the
ninth century by Harald Haarfagr, but internal wars broke out again under
Harald's son and successor, Eric. These troubles induced Hakon, an illegitimate
son of Harald Haarfagr and educated in England at the court of king Athelstan,
to return to Norway and lay claim to the crown. He succeeded in gaining a party
in his favor, expelled Eric and conquered all Norway, where he soon became
exceedingly popular, partly on account of his valor and military ability,
partly also on account of the refinement and suavity of his manners. Hakon was
a Christian, and the Christianization of Norway seems to have been his highest
goal from the very first days of his reign. But he was prudent. Without
attracting any great attention to the matter, he won over to Christianity a
number of those who stood nearest to him, called Christian priests from
England, and built a church at Drontheim. Meanwhile he began to think that the
time had come for a more public and more decisive step, and at the great Frostething,
where all the most prominent men of the country were assembled, he addressed
the people on the matter and exhorted them to become Christians. The answer he
received was very characteristic. They had no objection to Christianity itself,
for they did not know what it meant, but they suspected the king's proposition,
as if it were a political stratagem by means of which he intended to defraud
them of their political rights and liberties. Thus they not only refused to
become Christians themselves, but even compelled the king to partake in their
heathen festivals and offer sacrifices to their heathen gods. The king was very
indignant and determined to take revenge, but just as he had got an army
together, the sons of the expelled Eric landed in Norway and in the battle
against them, 961, he received a deadly wound.

The sons of Eric, who had lived
in England during their exile, were likewise Christians, and they took up the
cause of Christianity in a very high-handed manner, overthrowing the heathen
altars and forbidding sacrifices. But the impression they made was merely
odious, and their successor, Hakon Jarl, was a rank heathen. The first time
Christianity really gained a footing in Norway, was under Olaf Trygveson.
Descended from Harald Haarfagr, but sold, while a child, as a slave in
Esthonia, he was ransomed by a relative who incidentally met him and recognized
his own kin in the beauty of the boy, and was educated at Moscow. Afterwards he
roved about much in Denmark, Wendland, England and Ireland, living as a
sea-king. In England he became acquainted with Christianity and immediately
embraced it, but he carried his viking-nature almost unchanged over into
Christianity, and a fiercer knight of the cross was probably never seen.
Invited to Norway by a party which had grown impatient of the tyranny of Hakon
Jarl, he easily made himself master of the country, in 995, and immediately set
about making Christianity its religion, "punishing severely," as
Snorre says, "all who opposed him, killing some, mutilating others, and
driving the rest into banishment."
In the Southern part there still lingered a remembrance of Christianity
from the days of Hakon the Good, and things went on here somewhat more
smoothly, though Olaf more than once gave the people assembled in council with
him the choice between fighting him or accepting baptism forthwith. But in the
Northern part all the craft and all the energy of the king were needed in order
to overcome the opposition. Once, at a great heathen festival at Moere, he told
the assembled people that, if he should return to the heathen gods it would be
necessary for him to make some great and awful sacrifice, and accordingly he
seized twelve of the most prominent men present and prepared to sacrifice them
to Thor. They were rescued, however, when the whole assembly accepted
Christianity and were baptized. In the year 1000, he fell in a battle against
the united Danish and Swedish kings, but though he reigned only five years, he
nevertheless succeeded in establishing Christianity as the religion of Norway
and, what is still more remarkable, no general relapse into heathenism seems to
have taken place after his death.

During the reign of Olaf the
Saint, who ruled from a.d.
1014-'30, the Christianization of the country was completed. His task it was to
uproot heathenism wherever it was still found lurking, and to give the
Christian religion an ecclesiastical organization. Like his predecessors, he
used craft and violence to reach his goal. Heathen idols and altars
disappeared, heathen customs and festivals were suppressed, the civil laws were
brought into conformity with the rules of Christian morals. The country was
divided into dioceses and parishes, churches were built, and regular revenues
were raised for the sustenance of the clergy. For the most part he employed
English monks and priests, but with the consent of the archbishop of
Hamburg-Bremen, under whose authority he placed the Norwegian church. After his
death, in the battle of Stiklestad, July 29, 1030, he was canonized and became
the patron saint of Norway.

To Norway belonged, at that
time, Iceland. From Icelandic
tradition as well as from the "De Mensura Orbis" by Dicuilus, an
Irish monk in the beginning of the ninth century, it appears that Culdee
anchorites used to retire to Iceland as early as the beginning of the eighth
century, while the island was still uninhabited. These anchorites, however,
seem to have had no influence whatever on the Norwegian settlers who, flying
from the tyranny of Harald Haarfagr, came to Iceland in the latter part of the
ninth century and began to people the country. The new-comers were heathen, and
they looked with amazement at Auda the Rich, the widow of Olaf the White, king
of Dublin, who in 892 took up her abode in Iceland and reared a lofty cross in
front of her house. But the Icelanders were great travellers, and one of them,
Thorvald Kodranson, who in Saxony had embraced Christianity, brought bishop
Frederic home to Iceland. Frederic stayed there for four years, and his
preaching found easy access among the people. The mission of Thangbrand in the
latter part of the tenth century failed, but when Norway, or at least the
Norwegian coast, became Christian, the intimate relation between Iceland and
Norway soon brought the germs which Frederic had planted, into rapid growth,
and in the year 1000 the Icelandic Althing declared Christianity to be the
established religion of the country. The first church was built shortly after
from timber sent by Olaf the Saint from Norway to the treeless island.

At what time the Slavs first
made their appearance in Europe is not known. Latin and Greek writers of the
second half of the sixth century, such as Procopius, Jornandes, Agathias, the
emperor Mauritius and others, knew only those Slavs who lived along the
frontiers of the Roman empire. In the era of Charlemagne the Slavs occupied the
whole of Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Balkan; the Obotrites and Wends
between the Elbe and the Vistula; the Poles around the Vistula, and behind them
the Russians; the Czechs in Bohemia. Further to the South the compact mass of
Slavs was split by the invasion of various Finnish or Turanian tribes; the Huns
in the fifth century, the Avars in the sixth, the Bulgarians in the seventh, the
Magyars in the ninth. The Avars penetrated to the Adriatic, but were thrown
back in 640 by the Bulgarians; they then settled in Panonia, were subdued and
converted by Charlemagne, 791-796, and disappeared altogether from history in
the ninth century. The Bulgarians adopted the Slavic language and became Slavs,
not only in language, but also in customs and habits. Only the Magyars, who
settled around the Theiss and the Danube, and are the ruling race in Hungary,
vindicated themselves as a distinct nationality.

The great mass of Slavs had no
common political organization, but formed a number of kingdoms, which
flourished, some for a shorter, and others for a longer period, such as
Moravia, Bulgaria, Bohemia, Poland, and Russia. In a religious respect also great
differences existed among them. They were agriculturists, and their gods were
representatives of natural forces; but while Radigost and Sviatovit, worshipped
by the Obotrites and Wends, were cruel gods, in whose temples, especially at
Arcona in the island of Rügen, human beings were sacrificed, Svarog worshipped
by the Poles, and Dazhbog, worshipped by the Bohemians, were mild gods, who
demanded love and prayer. Common to all Slavs, however, was a very elaborate
belief in fairies and trolls; and polygamy, sometimes connected with sutteeism,
widely prevailed among them. Their conversion was attempted both by
Constantinople and by Rome; but the chaotic and ever-shifting political
conditions under which they lived, the rising difference and jealousy between
the Eastern and Western churches, and the great difficulty which the
missionaries experienced in learning their language, presented formidable
obstacles, and at the close of the period the work was not yet completed.

Charlemagne was the first who
attempted to introduce Christianity among the Slavic tribes which, under the
collective name of Wends, occupied the Northern part of Germany, along the
coast of the Baltic, from the mouth of the Elbe to the Vistula: Wagrians in
Holstein, Obotrites in Mecklenburg, Sorbians on the Saxon boundary, Wilzians in
Brandenburg, etc. But in the hands of Charlemagne, the Christian mission was a
political weapon; and to the Slavs, acceptation of Christianity became
synonymous with political and national subjugation. Hence their fury against
Christianity which, time after time, broke forth, volcano-like, and completely
destroyed the work of the missionaries. The decisive victories which Otto I.
gained over the Wends, gave him an opportunity to attempt, on a large scale,
the establishment of the Christian church among them. Episcopal sees were
founded at Havelberg in 946, at Altenburg or Oldenburg in 948, at Meissen,
Merseburg, and Zeitz in 968, and in the last year an archiepiscopal see was founded
at Magdeburg. Boso, a monk from St. Emmeran, at Regensburg, who first had
translated the formulas of the liturgy into the language of the natives, became
bishop of Merseburg, and Adalbert, who first had preached Christianity in the
island of Rügen, became archbishop.

But again the Christian church
was used as a means for political purposes, and, in the reign of Otto II., a
fearful rising took place among the Wends under the leadership of Prince
Mistiwoi. He had become a Christian himself; but, indignant at the suppression
which was practiced in the name of the Christian religion, he returned to
heathenism, assembled the tribes at Rethre, one of the chief centres of Wendish
heathendom, and began, in 983, a war which spread devastation all over Northern
Germany. The churches and monasteries were burnt, and the Christian priests
were expelled. Afterwards Mistiwoi was seized with remorse, and tried to cure
the evil he had done in an outburst of passion. But then his subjects abandoned
him; he left the country, and spent the last days of his life in a Christian
monastery at Bardewick. His grandson, Gottschalk, whose Slavic name is unknown,
was educated in the Christian faith in the monastery of St. Michael., near
Lüneburg; but when he heard that his father, Uto, had been murdered, 1032, the
old heathen instincts of revenge at once awakened within him. He left the
monastery, abandoned Christianity, and raised a storm of persecution against
the Christians, which swept over all Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, and Holstein.
Defeated and taken prisoner by Bernard of Lower Saxony, he returned to
Christianity; lived afterwards at the court of Canute the Great in Denmark and
England; married a Danish princess, and was made ruler of the Obotrites. A
great warrior, he conquered Holstein and Pommerania, and formed a powerful
Wendish empire; and on this solid political foundation, he attempted, with
considerable success, to build up the Christian church. The old bishoprics were
re-established, and new ones were founded at Razzeburg and Mecklenburg;
monasteries were built at Leuzen, Oldenburg, Razzeburg, Lübeck, and
Mecklenburg; missionaries were provided by Adalbert, archbishop of
Hamburg-Bremen; the liturgy was translated into the native tongue, and revenues
were raised for the support of the clergy, the churches, and the service.

But, as might have been
expected, the deeper Christianity penetrated into the mass of the people, the
fiercer became the resistance of the heathen. Gottschalk was murdered at Lentz,
June 7, 1066, together with his old teacher, Abbot Uppo, and a general rising
now took place. The churches and schools were destroyed; the priests and monks
were stoned or killed as sacrifices on the heathen altars; and Christianity,
was literally swept out of the country. It took several decades before a new
beginning could be made, and the final Christianization of the Wends was not
achieved until the middle of the twelfth century.

§ 34. Cyrillus and Methodius, the Apostles of the Slavs.
Christianization of Moravia, Bohemia and Poland.

The Moravian Slavs were
subjugated by Charlemagne, and the bishop of Passau was charged with the
establishment of a Christian mission among them. Moymir, their chief, was
converted and bishoprics were founded at Olmütz and Nitra. But Lewis the German
suspected Moymir of striving after independence and supplanted him by Rastislaw
or Radislaw. Rastislaw, however, accomplished what Moymir had only been
suspected of. He formed an independent Moravian kingdom and defeated Lewis the
German, and with the political he also broke the ecclesiastical connections
with Germany, requesting the Byzantine emperor, Michael III., to send him some
Greek missionaries.

Cyrillus
and Methodius became the apostles of the
Slavs. Cyrillus, whose original name was Constantinus, was born at
Thessalonica, in the first half of the ninth century, and studied philosophy in
Constantinople, whence his by-name: the philosopher. Afterwards he devoted
himself to the study of theology, and went to live, together with his brother
Methodius, in a monastery. A strong ascetic, he became a zealous missionary. In
860 he visited the Chazares, a Tartar tribe settled on the North-Eastern shore
of the Black Sea, and planted a Christian church there. He afterward labored
among the Bulgarians and finally went, in company with his brother, to Moravia,
on the invitation of Rastislaw, in 863.

Cyrillus understood the Slavic
language, and succeeded in making it available for literary purposes by
inventing a suitable alphabet. He used Greek letters, with some Armenian and
Hebrew, and some original letters. His Slavonic alphabet is still used with
alterations in Russia, Wallachia, Moldavia, Bulgaria, and Servia. He translated
the liturgy and the pericopes into Slavic, and his ability to preach and
celebrate service in the native language soon brought hundreds of converts into
his fold. A national Slavic church rapidly arose; the German priests with the
Latin liturgy left the country. It corresponded well with the political plans
of Rastislaw, to have a church establishment entirely independent of the German
prelates, but in the difference which now developed between the Eastern and
Western churches, it was quite natural for the young Slavic church to connect
itself with Rome and not with Constantinople, partly because Cyrillus always
had shown a kind of partiality to Rome, partly because the prudence and discrimination
with which Pope Nicholas I. recently had interfered in the Bulgarian church,
must have made a good impression.

In 868 Cyrillus and Methodius
went to Rome, and a perfect agreement was arrived at between them and Pope
Adrian II., both with respect to the use of the Slavic language in religious
service and with respect to the independent position of the Slavic church,
subject only to the authority of the Pope. Cyrillus died in Rome, Feb. 14, 869,
but Methodius returned to Moravia, having been consecrated archbishop of the
Pannonian diocese.

The organization of this new
diocese of Pannonia was, to some extent, an encroachment on the dioceses of
Passau and Salzburg, and such an encroachment must have been so much the more
irritating to the German prelates, as they really had been the first to sow the
seed of Christianity among the Slavs. The growing difference between the
Eastern and Western churches also had its effect. The German clergy considered
the use of the Slavic language in the mass an unwarranted innovation, and the
Greek doctrine of the single procession of the Holy Spirit, still adhered to by
Methodius and the Slavic church, they considered as a heresy. Their attacks,
however, had at first no practical consequences, but when Rastislaw was succeeded
in 870 by Swatopluk, and Adrian II. in 872 by John VIII., the position of
Methodius became difficult. Once more, in 879, he was summoned to Rome, and
although, this time too, a perfect agreement was arrived at, by which the
independence of the Slavic church was confirmed, and all her natural
peculiarities were acknowledged, neither the energy of Methodius, nor the
support of the Pope was able to defend her against the attacks which now were
made upon her both from without and from within. Swatopluk inclined towards the
German-Roman views, and Wichin one of Methodius's bishops, became their
powerful champion.

After the death of Swatopluk,
the Moravian kingdom fell to pieces and was divided between the Germans, the
Czechs of Bohemia, and the Magyars of Hungary; and thereby the Slavic church
lost, so to speak, its very foundation. Methodius died between 881 and 910. At
the opening of the tenth century the Slavic church had entirely lost its
national character. The Slavic priests were expelled and the Slavic liturgy
abolished, German priests and the Latin liturgy taking their place. The
expelled priests fled to Bulgaria, whither they brought the Slavic translations
of the Bible and the liturgy.

Neither Charlemagne nor Lewis
the Pious succeeded in subjugating Bohemia, and although the country was added
to the diocese of Regensburg, the inhabitants remained pagans. But when Bohemia
became a dependency of the Moravian empire and Swatopluk married a daughter of
the Bohemian duke, Borziwai, a door was opened to Christianity. Borziwai and
his wife, Ludmilla, were baptized, and their children were educated in the
Christian faith. Nevertheless, when Wratislav, Borziwai's son and successor,
died in 925, a violent reaction took place. He left two sons, Wenzeslav and Boleslav,
who were placed under the tutelage of their grandmother, Ludmilla. But their
mother, Drahomira, was an inveterate heathen, and she caused the murder first
of Ludmilla, and then of Wenzeslav, 938. Boleslav, surnamed the Cruel, had his
mother's nature and also her faith, and he almost succeeded in sweeping
Christianity out of Bohemia. But in 950 he was utterly defeated by the emperor,
Otto I., and compelled not only to admit the Christian priests into the
country, but also to rebuild the churches which had been destroyed, and this
misfortune seems actually to have changed his mind. He now became, if not
friendly, at least forbearing to his Christian subjects, and, during the reign
of his son and successor, Boleslav the Mild, the Christian Church progressed so
far in Bohemia that an independent archbishopric was founded in Prague. The
mass of the people, however, still remained barbarous, and heathenish customs
and ideas lingered among them for more than a century. Adalbert, archbishop of
Prague, from 983 to 997,130preached against polygamy, the trade in Christian
slaves, chiefly carried on by the Jews, but in vain. Twice he left his see,
disgusted and discouraged; finally he was martyred by the Prussian Wends. Not
until 1038 archbishop Severus succeeded in enforcing laws concerning marriage,
the celebration of the Lord's Day, and other points of Christian morals. About
the contest between the Romano-Slavic and the Romano-Germanic churches in
Bohemia, nothing is known. Legend tells that Methodius himself baptized
Borziwai and Ludmilla, and the first missionary, work was, no doubt, done by
Slavic priests, but at the time of Adalbert the Germanic tendency was
prevailing.

Also among the Poles the Gospel
was first preached by Slavic missionaries, and Cyrillus and Methodius are
celebrated in the Polish liturgy131as the apostles of the country.
As the Moravian empire under Rastislaw comprised vast regions which afterward
belonged to the kingdom of Poland, it is only natural that the movement started
by Cyrillus and Methodius should have reached also these regions, and the name
of at least one Slavic missionary among the Poles, Wiznach, is known to
history.

After the breaking up of the
Moravian kingdom, Moravian nobles and priests sought refuge in Poland, and
during the reign of duke Semovit Christianity had become so powerful among the
Poles, that it began to excite the jealousy of the pagans, and a violent
contest took place. By the marriage between Duke Mieczyslav and the Bohemian
princess Dombrowka, a sister of Boleslav the Mild, the influence of
Christianity became still stronger. Dombrowka brought a number of Bohemian
priests with her to Poland, 965, and in the following year Mieczyslav himself
was converted and baptized. With characteristic arrogance he simply demanded
that all his subjects should follow his example, and the pagan idols were now
burnt or thrown into the river, pagan sacrifices were forbidden and severely
punished, and Christian churches were built. So far the introduction of
Christianity among the Poles was entirely due to Slavic influences, but at this
time the close political connection between Duke Mieczyslav and Otto I. opened
the way for a powerful German influence. Mieczyslav borrowed the whole
organization of the Polish church from Germany. It was on the advice of Otto I.
that he founded the first Polish bishopric at Posen and placed it under the
authority of the archbishop of Magdeburg. German priests, representing Roman
doctrines and rites, and using the Latin language, began to work beside the
Slavic priests who represented Greek doctrines and rites and used the native
language, and when finally the Polish church was placed wholly under the
authority of Rome, this was not due to any spontaneous movement within the
church itself, such as Polish chroniclers like to represent it, but to the
influence of the German emperor and the German church. Under Mieczyslav's son,
Boleslav Chrobry, the first king of Poland and one of the most brilliant heroes
of Polish history, Poland, although christianized only on the surface, became itself
the basis for missionary labor among other Slavic tribes.

It was Boleslav who sent
Adalbert of Prague among the Wends, and when Adalbert here was pitifully
martyred, Boleslav ransomed his remains, had them buried at Gnesen (whence they
afterwards were carried to Prague), and founded here an archiepiscopal see,
around which the Polish church was finally consolidated. The Christian mission,
however, was in the hands of Boleslav, just as it often had been in the hands
of the German emperors, and sometimes even in the hands of the Pope himself,
nothing but a political weapon. The mass of the population of his own realm was
still pagan in their very hearts. Annually the Poles assembled on the day on
which their idols had been thrown into the rivers or burnt, and celebrated the
memory of their gods by dismal dirges,132and the simplest rules of
Christian morals could be enforced only by the application of the most
barbarous punishments. Yea, under the political disturbances which occurred
after the death of Mieczyslav II., 1034, a general outburst of heathenism took
place throughout the Polish kingdom, and it took a long time before it was
fully put down.

The Bulgarians were of Turanian
descent, but, having lived for centuries among Slavic nations, they had adopted
Slavic language, religion, customs and habits. Occupying the plains between the
Danube and the Balkan range, they made frequent inroads into the territory of
the Byzantine empire. In 813 they conquered Adrianople and carried a number of
Christians, among whom was the bishop himself, as prisoners to Bulgaria. Here
these Christian prisoners formed a congregation and began to labor for the
conversion of their captors, though not with any great success, as it would
seem, since the bishop was martyred. But in 861 a sister of the Bulgarian
prince, Bogoris, who had been carried as a prisoner to Constantinople, and
educated there in the Christian faith, returned to her native country, and her
exertions for the conversion of her brother at last succeeded.

Methodius was sent to her aid,
and a picture he painted of the last judgment is said to have made an
overwhelming impression on Bogoris, and determined him to embrace Christianity.
He was baptized in 863, and entered immediately in correspondence with Photius,
the patriarch of Constantinople. His baptism, however, occasioned a revolt
among his subjects, and the horrible punishment, which he inflicted upon the
rebels, shows how little as yet he had understood the teachings of
Christianity.

Meanwhile Greek missionaries,
mostly monks, had entered the country, but they were intriguing, arrogant, and
produced nothing but confusion among the people. In 865 Bogoris addressed
himself to Pope Nicolas I., asking for Roman missionaries, and laying before
the Pope one hundred and six questions concerning Christian doctrines, morals
and ritual, which he wished to have answered. The Pope sent two bishops to
Bulgaria, and gave Bogoris very elaborate and sensible answers to his
questions.

Nevertheless, the Roman mission
did not succeed either. The Bulgarians disliked to submit to any foreign
authority. They desired the establishment of an independent national church,
but this was not to be gained either from Rome or from Constantinople. Finally
the Byzantine emperor, Basilius Macedo, succeeded in establishing Greek bishops
and a Greek archbishop in the country, and thus the Bulgarian church came under
the authority of the patriarch of Constantinople, but its history up to this
very day has been a continuous struggle against this authority. The church is
now ruled by a Holy Synod, with an independent exarch.

Fearful atrocities of the Turks
against the Christians gave rise to the Russo-Turkish war in 1877, and resulted
in the independence of Bulgaria, which by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878 was
constituted into "an autonomous and tributary principality, under the
suzerainty of the Sultan," but with a Christian government and a national
militia. Religious proselytism is prohibited, and religious school-books must
be previously examined by the Holy Synod. But Protestant missionaries are at
work among the people, and practically enjoy full liberty.

The Magyars, belonging to the
Turanian family of nations, and allied to the Finns and the Turks, penetrated
into Europe in the ninth century, and settled, in 884, in the plains between
the Bug and the Sereth, near the mouth of the Danube. On the instigation of the
Byzantine emperor, Leo the Wise, they attacked the Bulgarians, and completely
defeated them. The military renown they thus acquired gave them a new opportunity.
The Frankish king Arnulf invoked their aid against Swatopluk, the ruler of the
Moravian empire. Swatopluk, too, was defeated, and his realm was divided
between the victors. The Magyars, retracing their steps across the Carpathian
range, settled in the plains around the Theiss and the Danube, the country
which their forefathers, the Huns, once had ruled over, the, present Hungary.
They were a wild and fierce race, worshipping one supreme god under the guise
of various natural phenomena: the sky, the river, etc. They had no temples and
no priesthood, and their sacrifices consisted of animals only, mostly horses.
But the oath was kept sacred among them, and their marriages were monogamous,
and inaugurated with religious rites.

The first acquaintance with Christianity
the Magyars made through their connections with the Byzantine court, without
any further consequences. But after settling in Hungary, where they were
surrounded on all sides by Christian nations, they were compelled, in 950, by
the emperor, Otto I., to allow the bishop of Passau to send missionaries into
their country; and various circumstances contributed to make this mission a
rapid and complete success. Their prince, Geyza, had married a daughter of the
Transylvanian prince, Gyula, and this princess, Savolta, had been educated in
the Christian faith. Thus Geyza felt friendly towards the Christians; and as
soon as this became known, Christianity broke forth from the mass of the
population like flowers from the earth when spring has come. The people which
the Magyars had subdued when settling in Hungary, and the captives whom they
had carried along with them from Bulgaria and Moravia, were Christians.
Hitherto these Christians had concealed their religion from fear of their
rulers, and their children had been baptized clandestinely; but now they
assembled in great multitudes around the missionaries, and the entrance of
Christianity into Hungary looked like a triumphal march.133

Political disturbances
afterwards interrupted this progress, but only for a short time. Adalbert of
Prague visited the country, and made a great impression. He baptized Geyza's
son, Voik, born in 961, and gave him the name of Stephanus, 994. Adalbert's
pupil, Rodla, remained for a longer period in the country, and was held in so
high esteem by the people, that they afterwards would not let him go. When
Stephanus ascended the throne in 997, he determined at once to establish
Christianity as the sole religion of his realm, and ordered that all Magyars
should be baptized, and that all Christian slaves should be set free. This,
however, caused a rising of the pagan party under the head of Kuppa, a relative
of Stephanus; but Kuppa was defeated at Veszprim, and the order had to be
obeyed.

Stephanus' marriage with Gisela,
a relative of the emperor, Otto III., brought him in still closer contact with
the German empire, and he, like Mieczyslav of Poland, borrowed the whole
ecclesiastical organization from the German church. Ten bishoprics were formed,
and placed under the authority of the archbishop of Gran on the Danube (which
is still the seat of the primate of Hungary); churches were built, schools and
monasteries were founded, and rich revenues were procured for their support;
the clergy was declared the first order in rank, and the Latin language was
made the official language not only in ecclesiastical, but also in secular
matters. As a reward for his zeal, Stephanus was presented by Pope Silvester
II. with a golden crown, and, in the year 1000, he was solemnly crowned king by
the archbishop of Gran, while a papal bull conferred on him the title of
"His Apostolic Majesty." And,
indeed, Stephanus was the apostle of the Magyars. As most of the priests and
monks, called from Germany, did not understand the language of the people, the
king himself travelled about from town to town, preached, prayed, and exhorted
all to keep the Lord's Day, the fast, and other Christian duties. Nevertheless,
it took a long time before Christianity really took hold of the Magyars,
chiefly on account of the deep gulf created between the priests and their
flocks, partly by the difference of language, partly by the exceptional
position which Stephanus had given the clergy in the community, and which the
clergy soon learned to utilize for selfish purposes. Twice during the eleventh
century there occurred heavy relapses into paganism; in 1045, under King
Andreas, and in 1060, under King Bela.

§ 37. The Christianization of Russia.

Nestor (monk
of Kieff, the oldest Russian annalist, d. 1116): Annales, or Chronicon
(from the building of the Babylonian tower to 1093). Continued by Niphontes (Nifon) from 1116-1157, and
by others to 1676. Complete ed. in Russ by Pogodin, 1841, and with a
Latin version and glossary by Fr. Miklosisch, Vindobon, 1860.
German translation by Schlözer, Göttingen, 1802-'9, 5 vols.
(incomplete).

A. N. Mouravieff (late chamberlain to the
Czar and Under-Procurator of the Most Holy Synod): A History of the Church
of Russia (to the founding of the Holy Synod in 1721). St. Petersburg,
1840, translated into English by Rev. R. W. Blackmore. Oxford, 1862.

The legend traces Christianity
in Russia back to the Apostle St. Andrew, who is especially revered by the
Russians. Mouravieff commences his history of the Russian church with these
words: "The Russian church, like the other Orthodox churches of the East,
had an apostle for its founder. St. Andrew, the first called of the Twelve,
hailed with his blessing long beforehand the destined introduction of
Christianity into our country. Ascending up and penetrating by the Dniepr into
the deserts of Scythia, he planted the first cross on the hills of Kieff, and
'See you,' said he to his disciples, 'those hills? On those hills shall shine the light of divine grace. There shall
be here a great city, and God shall have in it many churches to His name.' Such are the words of the holy Nestor that
point from whence Christian Russia has sprung."

This tradition is an expansion
of the report that Andrew labored and died a martyr in Scythia,134and nothing more.

In the ninth century the Russian
tribes, inhabiting the Eastern part of Europe, were gathered together under the
rule of Ruric, a Varangian prince,135who from the coasts of the
Baltic penetrated into the centre of the present Russia, and was voluntarily accepted,
if not actually chosen by the tribes as their chief. He is regarded as the
founder of the Russian empire, a.d.
862, which in 1862 celebrated its millennial anniversary. About the same time
or a little later the Russians became somewhat acquainted with Christianity
through their connections with the Byzantine empire. The Eastern church,
however, never developed any great missionary activity, and when Photius, the
patriarch of Constantinople, in his circular letter against the Roman see,
speaks of the Russians as already converted at his time (867), a few years
after the founding of the empire, he certainly exaggerates. When, in 945, peace
was concluded between the Russian grand-duke, Igor, and the Byzantine emperor,
some of the Russian soldiers took the oath in the name of Christ, but by far
the greatest number swore by Perun, the old Russian god. In Kieff, on the
Dniepr, the capital of the Russian realm, there was at that time a Christian
church, dedicated to Elijah, and in 955 the grand-duchess, Olga, went to
Constantinople and was baptized. She did not succeed, however, in persuading
her son, Svatoslav, to embrace the Christian faith.

The progress of Christianity
among the Russians was slow until the grand-duke Vladimir (980-1015), a grandson of Olga, and revered as
Isapostolos ("Equal to an Apostle") with one sweep established it as
the religion of the country. The narrative of this event by Nestor is very
dramatic. Envoys from the Greek and the Roman churches, from the Mohammedans
and the Jews (settled among the Chazares) came to Vladimir to persuade him to
leave his old gods. He hesitated and did not know which of the new religions he
should choose. Finally he determined to send wise men from among his own people
to the various places to investigate the matter. The envoys were so powerfully
impressed by a picture of the last judgment and by the service in the church of
St. Sophia in Constantinople, that the question at once was settled in favor of
the religion of the Byzantine court.

Vladimir, however, would not
introduce it without compensation. He was staying at Cherson in the Crimea,
which he had just taken and sacked, and thence he sent word to the emperor
Basil, that he had determined either to adopt Christianity and receive the
emperor's sister, Anne, in marriage, or to go to Constantinople and do to that
city as he had done to Cherson. He married Anne, and was baptized on the day of
his wedding, a.d. 988.

As soon as he was baptized
preparations were made for the baptism of his people. The wooden image of Perun
was dragged at a horse's tail through the country, soundly flogged by all
passers-by, and finally thrown into the Dniepr. Next, at a given hour, all the
people of Kieff, men, women and children, descended into the river, while the
grand Duke kneeled, and the Christian priests read the prayers from the top of
the cliffs on the shore. Nestor, the Russian monk and annalist, thus describes
the scene: "Some stood in the water up to their necks, others up to their
breasts, holding their young children in their arms; the priests read the
prayers from the shore, naming at once whole companies by the same name. It was
a sight wonderfully curious and beautiful to behold; and when the people were
baptized each returned to his own home."

Thus the Russian nation was
converted in wholesale style to Christianity by despotic power. It is
characteristic of the supreme influence of the ruler and the slavish submission
of the subjects in that country. Nevertheless, at its first entrance in Russia,
Christianity penetrated deeper into the life of the people than it did in any
other country, without, however, bringing about a corresponding thorough moral
transformation. Only a comparatively short period elapsed, before a complete
union of the forms of religion and the nationality took place. Every event in
the history of the nation, yea, every event in the life of the individual was
looked upon from a religious point of view, and referred to some distinctly
religious idea. The explanation of this striking phenomenon is due in part to
Cyrill's translation of the Bible into the Slavic language, which had been
driven out from Moravia and Bohemia by the Roman priests, and was now brought
from Bulgaria into Russia, where it took root. While the Roman church always
insisted upon the exclusive use of the Latin translation of the Bible and the
Latin language in divine service, the Greek church always allowed the use of
the vernacular. Under its auspices there were produced translations into the
Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Slavic languages, and the effects of this
principle were, at least in Russia, most beneficial. During the reign of
Vladimir's successor, Jaroslaff, 1019-1054, not only were churches and
monasteries and schools built all over the country, but Greek theological books
were translated, and the Russian church had, at an early date, a religious
literature in the native tongue of the people. Jaroslaff, by his celebrated
code of laws, became the Justinian of Russia.

The Czars and people of Russia
have ever since faithfully adhered to the Oriental church which grew with the
growth of the empire all along the Northern line of two Continents. As in the
West, so in Russia, monasticism was the chief institution for the spread of
Christianity among heathen savages. Hilarion (afterwards Metropolitan),
Anthony, Theodosius, Sergius, Lazarus, are prominent names in the early history
of Russian monasticism.

The subsequent history of the
Russian church is isolated from the main current of histoy, and almost barren
of events till the age of Nikon and Peter the Great. At first she was dependent
on the patriarch of Constantinople. In 1325 Moscow was founded, and became, in
the place of Kieff, the Russian Rome, with a metropolitan, who after the fall
of Constantinople became independent (1461), and a century later was raised to
the dignity of one of the five patriarchs of the Eastern Church (1587). But
Peter the Great made the Northern city of his own founding the ecclesiastical
as well as the political metropolis, and transferred the authority of the
patriarchate of Moscow to the "Holy Synod" (1721), which permanently
resides in St. Petersburg and constitutes the highest ecclesiastical judicatory
of Russia under the caesaropapal rule of the Czar, the most powerful rival of the
Roman Pope.

*Schaff, Philip, History of
the Christian Church, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997.
This material has been carefully compared, corrected¸ and emended (according to
the 1910 edition of Charles Scribner's Sons) by The Electronic Bible Society,
Dallas, TX, 1998.

7 The word Druid or Druidh is not from the Greek dru'", oak (as the elder Pliny thought), but a Keltic
term draiod, meaning sage, priest, and is equivalent to the magi
in the ancient East. In the Irish Scriptures draiod is used for magi,
Matt. 2:1.

8 See Haddan & Stubbs, Counc. and Eccles. Doc. I.
22-26, and Pryce, 31 sqq. Haddan says, that "statements respecting (a)
British Christians at Rome, (b) British Christians in Britain, (c) Apostles or
apostolic men preaching in Britain, in the first century—rest upon
either guess, mistake or fable;" and that "evidence alleged for the
existence of a Christian church in Britain during the second century is
simply unhistorical." Pryce calls these early agencies "gratuitons
assumptions, plausible guesses, or legendary fables." Eusebius, Dem. Ev.
III. 5, speaks as if some of the Twelve or of the Seventy had "crossed the
ocean to the isles called British;" but the passage is rhetorical and
indefinite. In his Church History he omits Britain from the apostolic
mission-field.

9 It is merely an inference from the well-known passage of Clement
of Rome, Ep. ad Corinth. c. 5, that Paul carried the gospel "to the end of
the West" (ejpi;to;tevrmath'"duvsew"). But this is far more
naturally understood of a visit to Spain which Paul intended (Rom. xv. 28), and
which seems confirmed by a passage in the Muratorian Fragment about 170 ("Profectionem Pauli ab urbe ad
Spaniam proficiscentis "); while there is no trace whatever of an intended or actual visit
to Britain. Canon Bright calls this merely a "pious fancy" (p. 1),
and Bishop Lightfoot remarks: "For the patriotic belief of some English
writers, who have included Britain in the Apostle's travels, there is neither
evidence nor probability" (St. Clement of Rome p. 50). It is barely
possible however, that some Galatian converts of Paul, visiting the far West to
barter the hair-cloths of their native land for the useful metal of Britain,
may have first made known the gospel to the Britons in their kindred Keltic
tongue. See Lightfoot, Com. on Gal., p. 246.

10 Book I., ch. 4: "Lucius, king of the Britons, sent a letter
to Eleutherus, entreating that by his command he might be made a Christian. He
soon obtained his pious request, and the Britons preserved the faith, which
they had received, uncorrupted and entire, in peace and tranquillity, until the
time of the Emperor Diocletian." Comp. the footnote of Giles inloc.
Haddan says (I. 25): "The story of Lucius rests solely upon the later form
of the Catalogus
Pontificum Romanorum which was written c. a. d.
530, and which adds to the Vita Eleutherus (a. d. 171-186) that 'Hic (Eleutherus)accepit
epistolam a Lucio Britanniae Rege, ut Chrristianus efficeretur par ejus
mandatum.' But these words are not in the original Catalogus,
written shortly after a. d.
353." Beda copies the Roman account. Gildas knows nothing of Lucius.
According to other accounts, Lucius ((Lever Maur, or the Great Light) sent
Pagan and Dervan to Rome, who were ordained by Evaristus or Eleutherus, and on
their return established the British church. See Lingard, History ofEngland,
I. 46.

11 Adv. Judaeos 7: "Britannorum inaccessa Romanis loca, Christo vero
subdita."
Bishop Kaye (Tertull., p. 94) understands this passage as referring to
the farthest extremities of Britain. So Burton (II. 207): "Parts of the
island which had not been visited by the Romans." See Bright, p. 5.

12 Bede I. 7. The story of St. Alban is first narrated by Gildas in
the sixth century. Milman and Bright (p. 6) admit his historic reality.

15 Bede I. 21 ascribes the triumph of the Catholic faith over the
Pelagian heresy to the miraculous healing of a lame youth by Germanus (St.
Germain), Bishop of Auxerre. Comp. also Haddan and Stubbs, I. 15-17.

17 The British and Irish Christians were stigmatized by their Roman
opponents as heretical Quartodecimans (Bede III. 4); but the Eastern
Quartodecimans invariably celebrated Easter on the fourteenth day of the month
(hence their designation), whether it fell on a Sunday or not; while the
Britons and Irish celebrated it always on a Sunday between the 14th and
the 20th of the month; the Romans between the 15th and 21st. Comp. Skene, l.c.
II. 9 sq.; the elaborate discussion of Ebrard, Die, iro-schott. Missionskirche,
19-77, and Killen, Eccles. Hist. of Ireland, I. 57 sqq.

19 Quoted by Lingard, I. 62. The picture here given corresponds
closely with that given in Beowulf's Drapa, from the 9th century.

20 King Arthur (or Artus), the hero of Wales, of the Chronicles of
Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the romances of the Round Table, if not entirely
mythical, was one of the last Keltic chiefs, who struggled against the Saxon
invaders in the sixth century. He resided in great state at Caerleon in Wales,
surrounded by valorous knights, seated with him at a round table, gained twelve
victories over the Saxons, and died in the battle of Mount Badon or Badon Hill
near Bath (a. d. 520). The legend
was afterwards Christianized, transferred to French soil, and blended with the
Carlovingian Knights of the Round Table, which never existed. Arthur's name was
also connected since the Crusades with the quest of the Holy Grail or Graal
(Keltic gréal, old French san gréal or greel), i.e. the wonderful
bowl-shaped vessel of the Lord's Supper (used for the Paschal Lamb, or,
according to another view, for the cup of blessing), in which Joseph of
Arimathaea caught the blood of the Saviour at the cross, and which appears in
the Arthurian romances as the token of the visible presence of Christ, or the
symbolic embodiment of the doctrine of transubstantiation. Hence the derivation
of Grail from sanguis realis, real blood, or sangroyal,
the Lord's blood. Others derive it from the Romanic greal, cup or dish;
still others from the Latin graduale. See Geoffrey
of Monmouth, Chronicon sive Historia Britonum (1130 and 1147,
translated into English by Aaron Thomson, London, 1718); Sir T. Malory, History of Prince Arthur
(1480-1485, new ed. by, Southey, 1817); Wolfram
von EschenbachParcival and Titurel (about 1205, transl. by K.
Simrock, Stuttg., 1842); Lachmann,
Wolfram von Eschenbach (Berlin, 1833, 2nd ed, 1854); Göschel
Die Sage von Parcival und vom Gral nach Wolfram von Eschenbach (Berlin, 1858); PaulinParis, Les Romans de la Table Ronde (Paris, 1860); Tennyson, The Idylls, of the King
(1859), and The Holy Grail (1869); Skene,
Four Ancient Books of Wales (1868); Stuart-Glennie, Arthurian Localities
(1869); Birch-Herschfeld, Die
Sage vom Gral,
(Leipz., 1877); and an article of Göschel,
Gral in the first ed. of Herzog's Encykl. V. 312 (omitted in the second
ed.).

21 Bede (I. 22) counts it among the most wicked acts or neglects
rather, of the Britons mentioned even by their own historian Gildas, that they,
never preached the faith to the Saxons who dwelt among them.

22 History of the Norman conquest of England, Vol. I., p. 22
(Oxford ed. of 1873).

23 Beda (B. II., ch.1 at the close) received this account "from
the ancients" (ab antiquis, or traditione majorum), but
gives it as an episode, not as a part of the English mission (which is related
I. 53). The elaborate play on words excites critical suspicion of the truth of
the story, which, though well told, is probably invented or embellished, like
so many legends about Gregory, ."Se non vero, e ben trovato."

24 Among these books were a Bible in 2 vols., a Psalter, a book of
the Gospels, a Martyrology, Apocryphal Lives of the Apostles, and some
Commentaries. "These are the foundation or beginning of the library of the
whole English church."

25 The first journey of Augustin, in 595, was a failure. He started
finally for England July 23d, 596, wintered in Gaul, and landed in England the
following year with about forty persons, including Gallic priests and
interpreters. Haddan and Stubbs, III. 4.

28 Not AEtherius, as Bede has it, I. 27, and in other places.
AEtherius was the contemporary archbishop of Lyons.

29 Bede I. 27 sqq. gives extracts from Gregory's answers. It is curious
how the pope handles such delicate subjects as the monthly courses and the
carnal intercourse between married people. A husband, he says, should not
approach his wife after the birth of an infant, till the infant be weaned.
Mothers should not give their children to other women to suckle. A man who has
approached his wife is not to enter the church unless washed with water and
till after sunset. We see here the genius of Romanism which aims to control by
its legislation all the ramifications of human life, and to shackle the
conscience by a subtle and minute casuistry. Barbarians, however, must be
treated like children.

37 See the details of the missionary labors in the seven kingdoms in
Bede; also in Milman l.c.; and the documents in Haddan and Stubbs, vol.
III.

38 "The conversion of the heptarchic kingdom," says
Professor Stubbs (ConstitutionalHistory of England, Vol. I., p.
217), "during the seventh century not only revealed to Europe and
Christendom the existence of a new nation, but may be said to have rendered the
new nation conscious of its unity in a way in which, under the influence of
heathenism, community of language and custom had failed to do."

39 See a full account of this controversy in Bede, III, c. 25, 26,
and in Haddan and Stubbs, III. 100-106.

40 The works of Theodore (Poenitentiale, etc.) in Migne's Patrol.,
Tom. 99, p. 902. Comp. also Bede, IV. 2, Bright, p. 223, and especially Haddan
and Stubbs, III. 114-227, where his Penitential is given in full. It was
probably no direct work of Theodore, but drawn up under his eye and published
by his authority. It presupposes a very bad state of morals among the clergy of
that age.

47 He is said to have left in Ireland, when he withdrew, some relics
of St. Peter and Paul, and a copy of the Old and New Testaments, which the Pope
had given him, together with the tablets on which he himself used to write.
Haddan & Stubbs, p. 291.

48 Hence Montalembert says (II. 393): "The Christian faith
dawned upon Ireland by means of two slaves." The slave-trade between
Ireland and England flourished for many centuries.

49 This fact is usually, omitted by Roman Catholic writers. Butler
says simply: "His father was of a good family." Even Montalembert
conceals it by calling "the Gallo-Roman (?) Patrick, son of a relative of
the great St. Martin of Tours" (II. 390). He also repeats, without a
shadow of proof, the legend that St. Patrick was consecrated and commissioned
by Pope St. Celestine (p. 391), though he admits that "legend and history
have vied in taking possession of the life of St. Patrick."

50 The dates are merely conjectural. Haddan & Stubbs (p. 295)
select a. d. 440 for St.
Patrick's mission (as did Tillemont & Todd), and 493 as the year of his
death. According to other accounts, his mission began much earlier, and lasted
sixty years. The alleged date of the foundation of Armagh is a. d. 445.

52 Killen, Vol. I. 12. Patrick describes himself as "Hiberione
constitutus episcopus." Afterwards he was called "Episcopus Scotorum," then
"Archiapostolus Scotorum," then "Abbat of all Ireland," and
"Archbishop, First Primate, and Chief Apostle of Ireland.' See Haddan
& Stubbs, p. 295.

53 Haddan & Stubbs, p. 294, note: "The language of the Hymns
of S. Sechnall and of S. Fiacc, and of S. Patrick's own Confessio, and
the silence of Prosper, besides chronological difficulties, disprove, upon
purely historical grounds, the supposed mission from Rome of S. Patrick
himself; which first appears in the Scholia on S. Fiacc's Hymn."

55 The Irish was first published by Dr. Petrie, and translated by Dr.
Todd. Haddan & Stubbs (320-323) give the Irish and English in parallel
columns. Some parts of this hymn are said to be still remembered by the Irish
peasantry, and repeated at bed-time as a protection from evil, or "as a
religious armor to protect body and soul against demons and men and
vices."

56 See Killen I. 76, note. Montalembert says, III. 118, note:
"Irish narratives know scarcely any numerals but those of three hundred
and three thousand.

57 A witty Irishman, who rowed me (in 1875) over Lake Killarney, told
me that St. Patrick put the last snake into an iron box, and sunk it to the
bottom of the lake, although he had solemnly promised to let the creature out.
I asked him whether it was not a sin to cheat a snake? "Not at all,"
was his quick reply, "he only paid him in the same coin; for the first
snake cheated the whole world." The same guide told me that Cromwell
killed all the good people in Ireland, and let the bad ones live; and when I
objected that he must have made an exception with his ancestors, he politely
replied: "No, my parents came from America."

64 Ammianus Marcellinus (XV. 9) describes the Druids as "bound
together in brotherhoods and corporations, according to the precepts of
Pythagoras!" See Killen, I. 29.

65 See next section. St. Patrick also is said to have been one of St.
Martin's disciples; but St. Martin lived nearly one hundred years earlier.

66 Angus the Culdee, in his Litany, invokes "forty thousand
monks, with the blessing of God, under the rule of Comgall of Bangor." But
this is no doubt a slip of the pen for "four thousand." Skene II. 56.
Bangor on the northeastern coast of Ireland must not be confounded with Bangor
on the westem coast of Wales.

67 Haddan & Stubbs, Vol. I., 170-198, give a collection of Latin
Scripture quotations of British or Irish writers from the fifth to the ninth
century (Fastidius, St. Patrick, Gildas, Columbanus, Adamnanus, Nennius, Asser,
etc.), and come to the conclusion that the Vulgate, though known to
Fastidius in Britain about a. d.
420, was probably unknown to St. Patrick, writing half a century later in
Ireland, but that from the seventh century on, the Vulgate gradually superseded
the Irish Latin version formerly in use.

68 Haddan & Stubbs, I. 192; Comp. p. 10. Ebrard and other writers
state the contrary, but without proof.

71 This papal-Irish bull is not found in the Bullarium Romanum,
the editors of which were ashamed of it, and is denounced by some Irish
Romanists as a monstrous and outrageous forgery, but it is given by, Matthew
Paris (1155), was confirmed by Pope Alexander III. in a letter to Henry II. (a. d. 1172), published in Ireland in
1175, printed in Baronius, Annales, ad a.
d. 1159, who took his copy from a Codex Vaticanus and is acknowledged as
undoubtedly genuine by Dr. Lanigan, the Roman Catholic historian of Ireland
(IV. 64), and other authorities; comp. Killen I. 211 sqq. It is as follows:

"Adrian, Bishop, Servant of
the servants of God, to his dearest son in Christ, the illustrious King of
England, greeting and apostolic benediction.

" Full laudably, and
profitably has your magnificence conceived the design of propagating your
glorious renown on earth, and of completing your reward of eternal happiness in
heaven, whilst as a Catholic prince you are intent on enlarging the borders of
the Church, teaching the truth of the Christian faith to the ignorant and rude,
extirpating the nurseries of iniquity from the field of the Lord, and for the
more convenient execution of this purpose, requiring the counsel and favor of
the Apostolic See. In which the maturer your deliberation and the greater the
discretion of your procedure, by, so much the happier, we trust, will be your
progress, with the assistance of the Lord; because whatever has its origin in
ardent faith and in love of religion always has a prosperous end and issue.

"There is indeed no doubt
but that Ireland and all the islands on which Christ the Sun of Righteousness
has shone, and which have received the doctrines of the Christian faith, belong
to the jurisdiction of St. Peter and of the holy Roman Church, as your
Excellency also acknowledges. And therefore we are the more solicitous to
propagate a faithful plantation among them, and a seed pleasing to the Lord, as
we have the secret conviction of conscience that a very, rigorous account must
be rendered of them.

" You then, most dear son
in Christ, have signified to us your desire to enter into the island of Ireland
that you may reduce the people to obedience to laws, and extirpate the
nurseries of vice, and that you are willing to pay from each house a yearly
pension of one penny to St. Peter, and that you will preserve the rights of the
churches of this land whole and inviolate. We, therefore, with that grace and
acceptance suited to your pious and laudable design, and favorably assenting to
your petition, hold it good and acceptable that, for extending the borders of
the church, restraining the progress of vice, for the correction of manners,
the planting of virtue, and the increase of the Christian religion, you enter
that island, and execute therein whatever shall pertain to the honor of God and
welfare of the land; and that the people of that land receive you honorably,
and reverence you as their lord—the rights of their churches still remaining
sacred and inviolate, and saving to St. Peter the annual pension of one penny
from every house.

"If then you are resolved
to carry the design you have conceived into effectual execution, study to train
that nation to virtuous manners, and labor by yourself and others whom you
shall judge meet for this work, in faith, word, and life, that the church may
be there adorned; that the religion of the Christian faith may be planted and grow
up, and that all things pertaining to the honor of God and the salvation of
souls be so ordered that you may be entitled to the fulness of eternal reward
in God, and obtain a glorious renown on throughout all ages."

79 In the Irish calendar there are twenty saints of the name Columba,
or Columbanus, Columbus, Columb. The most distinguished next to Columbcille is
Columbanus, the Continental missionary, who has often been confounded with
Columba. In the Continental hagiology, the name is used for female saints. See
Reeves, p. 248.

80 Montalembert, III. 112. This poem strikes the key-note of father
Prout's more musical "Bells of Shandon which sound so grand on the river
Lee."

81 "Pro Christo peregrinare volens," says Adamnan (p. 108), who knows nothing of his
excommunication and exile from Ireland in consequence of a great battle. And
yet it is difficult to account for this tradition. In one of the Irish Keltic
poems ascribed to Columba, he laments to have been driven from Erin by his own
fault and in consequence of the blood shed in his battles. Montalembert, III.
145.

82 This is not an adaptation to Columba's Hebrew name (Neander), but
a corruption of Ii-shona, i.e. the Holy Island (from Ii, the
Keltic name for island, and hona or shona, sacred). So Dr.
Lindsay Alexander and Cunningham. But Reeves (l.c. Introd., p. cxxx.)
regards Ioua as the genuine form, which is the feminine adjective of Iou
(to be pronounced like the English Yeo). The island has borne no fewer
than thirty names.

83 "No two objects of interest," says the Duke of Argyll (Iona,
p. 1) "could be more absolutely dissimilar in kind than the two
neighboring islands, Staffa and Iona:—Iona dear to Christendom for more than a
thousand years;—Staffa known to the scientific and the curious only since the
close of the last century. Nothing but an accident of geography could unite
their names. The number of those who can thoroughly understand and enjoy them
both is probably very small."

84 "Hither came holy men from Erin to take counsel with the
Saint on the troubles of clans and monasteries which were still dear to him.
Hither came also bad men red-handed from blood and sacrilege to make confession
and do penance at Columba's feet. Hither, too, came chieftains to be blessed,
and even kings to be ordained—for it is curious that on this lonely spot, so
far distant from the ancient centres of Christendom, took place the first
recorded case of a temporal sovereign seeking from a minister of the Church
what appears to have been very like formal consecration. Adamnan, as usual,
connects his narrative of this event, which took place in 547, with miraculous
circumstances, and with Divine direction to Columba, in his selection of Aidan,
one of the early kings of the Irish Dalriadic colony in Scotland.

" The fame of Columba's
supernatural powers attracted many and strange visitors to the shores on which
we are now looking. Nor can we fail to remember, with the Reilig Odhrain at our
feet, how often the beautiful galleys of that olden time came up the sound
laden with the dead,—'their dark freight a vanished life.' A grassy mound not
far from the present landing place is known as the spot on which bodies were
laid when they were first carried to the shore. We know from the account of
Columba's own burial that the custom is to wake the body with the singing of
psalms during three days and nights before laying it to its final rest. It was
then home in solemn procession to the grave. How many of such processions must
have wound along the path that leads to the Reilig Odhrain! How many fleets of
galley must have ridden at anchor on that bay below us, with all those
expressive signs of mourning which belong to ships, when kings and chiefs who
had died in distant lands were carried hither to be buried in this holy Isle!
From Ireland, from Scotland, and from distant Norway there came, during many
centuries, many royal funerals to its shores. And at this day by far the most
interesting remains upon the Island are the curious and beautiful tombstones
and crosses which lie in the Reilig Odhrain. They belong indeed, even the most
ancient of them, to, in age removed by many hundred years from Columba's time.
But they represent the lasting reverence which his name has inspired during so
many generations and the desire of a long succession of chiefs and warriors
through the Middle Ages and down almost to our own time, to be buried in the
soil he trod." The Duke of Argyll, l.c., pp. 95-98.

91 To Adamnan and to Bede, the name was entirely unknown. Skene (II.
226) says: "In the whole range of ecclesiastical history there is nothing
more entirely destitute of authority than the application of this name to the
Columban monks of the sixth and seventh centuries, or more utterly baseless
than the fabric which has been raised upon that assumption." The most
learned and ingenious construction of an imaginary Protestant Culdee Church was
furnished by Ebrard and McLauchlan.

92 The word Culdee is variously derived from the Gaelic Gille
De, servant of God; from the Keltic Cuil or Ceal, retreat,
recess, and Cuildich, men of the recess (Jamieson, McLauchlan,
Cunningham); from the Irish Ceile De, the spouse of God (Ebrard), or the
servant of God (Reeves); from the Irish Culla, cowl, i.e. the
black monk; from the Latin Deicola, cultores Dei (Colidei), worshippers of God the Father, in distinction from Christicolae
(Calechrist in Irish), or ordinary Christians (Skene); from the Greek kellew'tai, men of the cells (Goodall). The earliest Latin form is
Kaledei. in Irish Keile as a
substantive means socius maritus, also servus. On the name, see Braun, De
Culdeis, Bonn, 1840, McLauchlan pp. 175 sq.; Ebrard pp. 2 sq., and Skene,
II. 238.

93 The Duke of Argyll who is a Scotch Presbyterian, remarks (l.c.
p. 41): "It is vain to look, in the peculiarities of the Scoto-Irish
Church, for the model either of primitive practice, or of any particular
system. As regards the theology of Columba's time, although it was not what we
now understand as Roman, neither assuredly was it what we understand as
Protestant. Montalembert boasts, and I think with truth, that in Columba's life
we have proof of the practice of the auricular confession, of the invocation of
saints, of confidence in their protection, of belief in transubstantiation [?],
of the practices of fasting and of penance, of prayers for the dead, of the
sign of the crow in familiar—and it must be added—in most superstitious use. On
the other hand there is no symptom of the worship or 'cultus' of the Virgin,
and not even an allusion to such an idea as the universal bishopric of Rome, or
to any special authority as seated there."

97 In his testamentary creed, which he always held (semper sic
credidi), he confesses faith "in God the Father and in his only
begotten Son our Lord and God, and in the Holy Spirit as virtutem illuminantem et
sanctificantem nec Deum nec Dominum sed ministrum Christi." Comp. Krafft, l.c.
328 sqq.

98 With the oil of the miraculous cruise of oil (Ampulla Remensis)
which, according to Hincmar, a dove brought from heaven at the confirmation of
Clovis, and which was destroyed in 1794, but recovered in 1824.

104 The brotherhood of St. Maur was founded in 1618, and numbered such
scholars as Mabillon, Montfaucon, and Ruinart.

105 The legendary history of monasticism under the Merovingians is
well told by Montalembert, II. 236-386.

106 Also called Columba the younger, to distinguish him from the
Scotch Columba. There is a second St. Columbanus, an abbot of St. Trudo (St.
Troud) in France, and a poet, who died about the middle of the ninth century.

108 The date according to the Bollandists and Smith's Dict. of Chr.
Biogr. Ebrard puts the emigration of Columbanus to Gaul in the year 594.

109 There is a considerable difference between his Regula Monastica, in ten chapters, and his Regula Coenobialis Fratrum,
sive, Liber de quotidianis Poenitentiis Monachorum, in fifteen chapters. The
latter is unreasonably rigorous, and imposes corporal punishments for the
slightest offences, even speaking at table, or coughing at chanting. Ebrard (l.c.,
p. 148 sqq.) contends that the Regula Coenobialis, which is found only in two codices, is of later
origin. Comp. Hertel, l.c.

115 Comp. besides the Letters of Boniface, the works of Neander,
Rettberg, Ebrard, Werner and Fischer, quoted below.

116 One that wins peace. His Latin name Bonifacius, Benefactor, was
probably his monastic name, or given to him by the pope on his second visit to
Rome. 723.

117 The juramentum of Boniface, which he ever afterwards remembered
and observed with painful conscientiousness deserves to be quoted in full, as
it contains his whole missionary policy (see Migne, l.c., p. 803):

With all his devotion to the
Roman See, Boniface was manly and independent enough to complain in a letter to
Pope Zacharias of the scandalous heathen practices in Rome which were reported
by travellers and filled the German Christians with prejudice and disobedience
to Rome. See the letter in Migne, l.c. p. 746 sqq.

125 Neander III. 152 sqq. (Germ, ed.; Torrey's trnsl. III. 76). It
seems to me, from looking over Alcuin's numerous epistles to the emperor, he
might have used his influence much more freely with his pupil. Merivale says
(p. 131): "Alcuin of York, exerted his influence upon those Northern
missions from the centre of France, in which he had planted himself. The purity
and simplicity of the English school of teachers contrasted favoably with the
worldly, character of the Frankish priesthood, and Charlemagne himelf was
impressed with the importance of intrusting the establishment of the Church
throughout his Northern conquests to these foreigners rather than to his own
subjects. He appointed the Anglo-Saxon Willibrord to preside over the district
of Estphalia, and Liudger, a Friesian by birth, but an Englishman by his
training at York, to organize the church in Westphalia; while he left to the
earlier foundation of Fulda, which had also received its first Christian
traditions from the English Boniface and his pupil Sturm, the charge of Engern
or Angaria. From the teaching of these strangers there sprang up a crop of
Saxon priests and missionaries; from among the youths of noble family whom the
conqueror had carried off from their homes as hostages, many were selected to
be trained in the monasteries for the life of monks and preachers. Eventually
the Abbey of Corbie, near Amiens, was founded by one of the Saxon converts, and
became an important centre of Christian teaching. From hence sprang the
daughter-foundation of the New Corbie, or Corby, on the banks of the Weser, in
the diocese of Paderborn. This abbey received its charter from Louis le
Debonnaire in 823, and became no less important an institution for the
propagation of the faith in the north of Germany, than Fulda still continued to
be in the centre, and St. Gall in the South."